Quotes
Quotes about Thought
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er,
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
Here lies James Quinn. Deign, reader, to be taught,
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In Nature's happiest mould however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last.
Bom. So have I heard on Afric's burning shore
A hungry lion give a grievous roar;
The grievous roar echoed along the shore.
Artax. So have I heard on Afric's burning shore
Another lion give a grievous roar;
And the first lion thought the last a bore.
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind;
Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote.
Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining,
And thought of convincing while they thought of dining:
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit;
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,--glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy.... Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,--in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
In indolent vacuity of thought.
He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,--disfigure them to make 'em pass for their own.
And like a passing thought, she fled
In light away.
She was good as she was fair,
None--none on earth above her!
As pure in thought as angels are:
To know her was to love her.
A sudden thought strikes me,--let us swear an eternal friendship.
O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite,--a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thoughts supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.
A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,--
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love and thought and joy.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain-side.
By our own spirits we are deified;
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Yet sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound.
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.
Where the statue stood
Of Newton, with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray.
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction.
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
