Quotes
Quotes about Wit
The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!
But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
A stoic of the woods,--a man without a tear.
Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright,
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.
Oh, weep for the hour
When to Eveleen's bower
The lord of the valley with false vows came.
To live with them is far less sweet
Than to remember thee.
When true hearts lie wither'd
And fond ones are flown,
Oh, who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
To live and die in scenes like this,
With some we 've left behind us.
When thus the heart is in a vein
Of tender thought, the simplest strain
Can touch it with peculiar power.
To sigh, yet feel no pain;
To weep, yet scarce know why;
To sport an hour with Beauty's chain,
Then throw it idly by.
Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!
From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,
That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war,
Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.
Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour,
I 've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower
But 't was the first to fade away.
I never nurs'd a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well
And love me, it was sure to die.
'T was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,--not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,--a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.
In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, kings, lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.
Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.
I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.
On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,--a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.
Oh that it were my chief delight
To do the things I ought!
Then let me try with all my might
To mind what I am taught.
Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea.
Oh for a seat in some poetic nook,
Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook!
With spots of sunny openings, and with nooks
To lie and read in, sloping into brooks.
Then soon with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well.
