Quotes to inspire and reflect

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused with ill.

Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good: I am a God and cannot find it there.

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me.

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep—that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us—visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form.

Now Barabbas was a publisher.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!

Seek out—less often sought than found— A soldier’s grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest.

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar’s labor or the Turkman’s rest. 8

[Of Napoleon:] Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones, Whose table earth—whose dice were human bones.

The “good old times”—all times when old are good— Are gone.

To have seen better days, as who has not Who has seen yesterday?

He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow? I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter— Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.

Who killed John Keats? “I,” says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly; “ ’Twas one of my feats.”

The best of prophets of the future is the past.

All farewells should be sudden.

The antique Persians taught three useful things— To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story; The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction. 7

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase, “I told you so.”

Society is now one polish’d horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

That happiness for man—the hungry sinner!— Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

The English winter—ending in July, To recommence in August.

’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuff’d out by an article.

And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but The truth in masquerade.

When Bishop Berkeley said “there was no matter,” And proved it—’twas no matter what he said.

A lady of “a certain age,” which means Certainly aged.

Not so Leonidas and Washington, Whose every battlefield is holy ground, Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone.

And put himself upon his good behavior.

The women pardon’d all except her face.

There’s not a sea the passenger e’er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.

And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep.

What, silent still? and silent all? Ah! no;—the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent’s fall.

The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae.

Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! 6 Where burning Sappho loved and sung.

In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all the others, all she loves is love.

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication.

Is always so to women; one sole bond Awaits them, treachery is all their trust; Taught to conceal, their bursting hearts despond Over their idol, till some wealthier lust Buys them in marriage—and what rests beyond? A thankless husband, next a faithless lover, Then dressing, nursing, praying, and all’s over.

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after.