Quotes to inspire and reflect

Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

From those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!

The Night is mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling.

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore!

No fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon our land!

There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead; And when she was good She was very, very good, But when she was bad she was horrid.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night.

The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books.

Three silences there are: the first of speech, The second of desire, the third of thought.

He seemed the incarnate “Well, I told you so!”

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, 2 Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

The fate of a nation was riding that night.

One if by land, and two if by sea; 1 And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair.

I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet.

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and majesty of the ships, And the magic of the sea.

A Lady with a Lamp [Florence Nightingale] shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

The long mysterious Exodus of death.

“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.

As unto the bow the cord is, So unto the man is woman, Though she bends him, she obeys him, Though she draws him, yet she follows, Useless each without the other!

From the waterfall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water.

All your strength is in your union. All your danger is in discord; Therefore be at peace henceforward, And as brothers live together.

By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

And see! she stirs! She starts—she moves—she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel.

Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks… Stand like Druids of old.

Build me straight, O worthy Master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel.

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

The bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time.

The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.

Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary.

A banner with the strange device, Excelsior!

Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night’s repose.

His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate’er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.

Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman’s Woe!

Under the spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith a mighty man is he With large and sinewy hands. And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.

But the father answered never a word, A frozen corpse was he.

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.