Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Error's monstrous shapes from earth are driven They fade, they fly--but truth survives the flight.
To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.
He [William Henry Harrison] did not live long enough to prove his incapacity for the office of President.
The journalist should be on his guard against publishing what is false in taste or exceptionable in morals.
Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners.
Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.
All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The rugged trees are mingling Their flowery sprays in love; The ivy climbs the laurel To clasp the boughs above.
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.
Heed not the night; A summer lodge amid the wild is mine, 'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'Tis mantled by the vine.
A melancholy sound is in the air, A deep sigh in the distance, a shrill wail Around my dwelling. 'Tis the Wind of night.
Yet will that beauteous image make The dreary sea less drear And thy remembered smile will wake The hope that tramples fear
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art.
The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by. As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Ere, in the northern gale, The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, Have put their glory on.
Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues That live among the clouds, and flush the air, Lingering, and deepening at the hour of dews.
Beautiful isles! beneath the sunset skies tall, silver-shafted palm-trees rise, between full orange-trees that shade the living colonade.
There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night; And grief may hide an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light.
The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep to-night.
So they, who climb to wealth, forget The friends in darker fortunes tried. I copied them--but I regret That I should ape the ways of pride.
But 'neath yon crimson tree Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.
These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.
Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.
[Thanatopsis] was written in 1817, when Bryant was 23. Had he died then, the world would have thought it had lost a great poet. But he lived on.
The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.
Ah, never shall the land forget How gush'd the life-blood of the brave, Gush'd warm with hope and courage yet, Upon the soil they fought to save!
A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.
Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,- The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers.
The breath of springtime at this twilight hour Comes through the gathering glooms, And bears the stolen sweets of many a flower Into my silent rooms.
There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by a loving eye; There is no fragrance in April breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by.
Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.
The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.
Sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Hark to that shrill, sudden shout, The cry of an applauding multitude, Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields The living mass as if he were its soul!
But Winter has yet brighter scenes-he boasts Splendors beyond what gorgeous Summer knows; Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods All flushed with many hues.
Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd and under roofs That our frail hands have raised?
Showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back.
On rolls the stream with a perpetual sigh; The rocks moan wildly as it passes by; Hyssop and wormwood border all the strand, And not a flower adorns the dreary land.
The sweet calm sunshine of October, now Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold The pur0ple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.
Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.
Oh, river! darkling river! what a voice Is that thou utterest while all else is still-- The ancient voice that, centuries ago, Sounded between thy hills, while Rome was yet A weedy solitude by Tiber's stream!
Gently - so have good men taught - Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide Into the new; the eternal flow of things, Like a bright river of the fields of heaven, Shall journey onward in perpetual peace.