18 quotes
Truth illuminates and gives joy; and it is by the band of joy, not of pleasure, that men’s spirits are indissolubly held.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Men of culture are the true apostles of equality.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Religion—that voice of the deepest human experience.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
The imitators of Shakespeare, fixing their attention on his wonderful power of expression, have directed their imitation to this.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.
Attributed
’Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But ’tis not what our youth desires.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
How many minds—almost all the great ones—were formed in secrecy and solitude!
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
On one she smiled, and he was blest;
She smiles elsewhere—we make a din!
But ’twas not love which heaved her breast,
Fair child!—it was the bliss within.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind,
Hath look’d on no religion scornfully
That men did ever find.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Genius is mainly an affair of energy.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
Like the wave;
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles; and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
No, no! The energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg’d not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing—only he
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm’s not life’s crown, though calm is well.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes; but not this alone.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Now, the whole world hears
Or shall hear,—surely shall hear, at the last,
Though men delay, and doubt, and faint, and fail,—
That promise faithful:—“Fear not, little flock!
It is your Father’s will and joy, to give
To you, the Kingdom”!
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man’s moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Odin, thou whirlwind, what a threat is this
Thou threatenest what transcends thy might, even thine,
For of all powers the mightiest far art thou,
Lord over men on earth, and Gods in Heaven;
Yet even from thee thyself hath been withheld
One thing—to undo what thou thyself hast ruled.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
It does not try to reach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords of its own. It seeks to do away with classes, to make the best that has been taught and known in the world current everywhere, to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely—nourished, and not bound by them.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)