Quote collection
453 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Let us be thankful that there is no court by which we can be excluded from our share in the inheritance of the great poets of all ages and countries, to which our simple humanity entitles us."
"Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men."
"He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory."
"Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves."
"Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy."
"Silence is sorrow's best food."
"There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers."
"It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is."
"The nunneries of silent nooks, the murmured longing of the wood."
"A sneer is the weapon of the weak. Like other devil's weapons, it is always cunningly ready to our hand, and there is more poison in the handle than in the point."
"No man, I suspect, ever lived long in the country without being bitten by these meteorological ambitions. He likes to be hotter and colder, to have been more deeply snowed up, to have more trees and larger blown down than his neighbors."
"It is beginning to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress sit in Westminster and Washington, or in the editorial rooms of the leading journals,--so thoroughly is everything debated before the authorized and responsible debaters get on their legs."
"I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright."
"In general those who nothing have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it."
"Practical application is the only mordant which will set things in the memory. Study without it is gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual bread."
"Where Church and State are habitually associated, it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police."
"Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it."
"Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity."
"Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal; Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?"
"Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen.""