Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I long for Europe of the ancient parapets. 8

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

Of the Sea… Devouring the green azures. 6

My sad heart foams at the stern. 4

Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves. 5

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by. Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about?

A child should always say what’s true And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table; At least as far as he is able.

Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest— 1 Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candlelight. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day.

O, it sets my heart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock, When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

Oh! the old swimmin’ hole! When I last saw the place, The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face.

’Long about knee-deep in June, ’Bout the time strawberries melts On the vine.

An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about, An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you Ef you Watch Out!

That old sweetheart of mine.

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon And you were a Christian Slave.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud; Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

As dust that drives, as straws that blow, Into the night go one and all.

O Ireland, isn’t it grand you look— Like a bride in her rich adornin’? And with all the pent-up love of my heart I bid you the top o’ the mornin’!

And all else is literature. 5

Take eloquence and wring its neck! 4