Quotes to inspire and reflect

Though I’ve belted you an’ flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

’Ave you ’eard o’ the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on ’er ’ead?

So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan; You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck ’im out, the brute!” But it’s “Savior of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot.

They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away, An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes.

“What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade. “To turn you out, to turn you out,” the Color-Sergeant said.

They rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

When Earth’s last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an eon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.

If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone. 1

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

Little Tin Gods on Wheels.

The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth point goes; The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad.

I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside And the lives ye led were mine.

At my dying hour, and over my long life, A clock strikes somewhere at the city’s edge.

Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.

It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!

When a voice behind me whispered low, “That fellow’s got to swing.”

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

O seasons, O châteaux, What soul is without flaws? 12

It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea Gone with the sun. 11

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels, Someday I shall recount your latent births. 10

I long for Europe of the ancient parapets. 8

I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager: Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile, A million golden birds, O future Vigor? 9

Of the Sea… Devouring the green azures. 6

I have seen the sunset, stained with mystic horrors, Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms, Like actors in ancient plays. 7

My sad heart foams at the stern. 4

Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves. 5

Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.

I wish to leave the world By its natural door; In my tomb of green leaves They are to carry me to die. Do not put me in the dark To die like a traitor; I am good, and like a good thing I will die with my face to the sun.

No! the two kinds of people on earth that I mean Are the people who lift and the people who lean.

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home!

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble dew, Steel-true and blade-straight The great artificer Made my mate.

The untented Kosmos my abode, I pass, a willful stranger; My mistress still the open road And the bright eyes of danger.

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of birdsong at morning and starshine at night.

My body which my dungeon is, And yet my parks and palaces.

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I ask, the heaven above And the road below me.

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.