Quotes
Quotes about Age
The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use.
These two hated with a hate
Found only on the stage.
Lo where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn.
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,
Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear.
No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country's good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.
Music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
Far beneath the tainted foam
That frets above our peaceful home,
We dream in joy and wake in love
Nor know the rage that yells above.
Mournfully, oh, mournfully,
The midnight wind doth sigh,
Like some sweet plaintive melody
Of ages long gone by.
How widely its agencies vary,--
To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,--
As even its minted coins express,
Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess,
And now of a Bloody Mary.
The courage of New England was the "courage of Conscience." It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.
Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain; wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,--there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens.
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
The English Bible,--a book which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!--To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity; to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!
In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
Where good and ill together blent,
Wage an undying strife.
A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world.
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
He stood beside a cottage lone
And listened to a lute,
One summer's eve, when the breeze was gone,
And the nightingale was mute.
