55 quotes
All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the imagination.
An Old Town by the Sea (1893)
Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. The current-topic variety is especially subject to early frosts, as is also the dialectic species.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down on the most desirable spot.
An Old Town by the Sea (1893)
Conservatism and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the unconventional its values also?
An Old Town by the Sea (1893)
My father invested his money so securely in the banking business that he was never able to get any of it out again.
The Story of a Bad Boy (1870)
Night is a stealthy, evil Raven,
Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.
Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
In her eyes a thought
Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn—
A mystical forewarning!
Or light or dark, or short or tall,
She sets a springe to snare them all:
All's one to her—above her fan
She'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.
Flower and Thorn (1882)
When friends are at your hearthside met,
Sweet courtesy has done its most
If you have made each guest forget
That he himself is not the host.
Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)
Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay.
And serve the potter as he turns his wheel,
I thank thee for the precious gift of tears!
Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)
The ability to secure your own way and yet impress others with the idea that they are having their own way is rare among men; in women it is as common as eyebrows.
The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know.
Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise
And shows you laughing lips and rougish eyes.
But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears,
'Tis ten to one you find the girl in tears.
Flower and Thorn (1882)
If my best wines mislike thy taste,
And my best service win thy frown,
Then tarry not, I bid thee haste;
There's many another Inn in town.
Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)
We visit […] a neighboring graveyard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to become a willing inmate of the place.
The Story of a Bad Boy (1870)