Quotes
Quotes about Wit
I don't like your way of conditioning and contracting with the saints. Do this and I'll do that! Here's one for t'other. Save me and I'll give you a taper or go on a pilgrimage.
What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle; Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile; In vain with lavish kindness The gifts of God are strown; The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone.
As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds. And his gods they are shaped in his image and mirror his needs. And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, He clothes them with music and fire, Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, That he worships his own desire.
For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion, But is worthy some worship of mine; Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble, but open eyed.
So shall they build me altars in their zeal, Where knaves shall minister, and fools shall kneel: Where faith may mutter o'er her mystic spell, Written in blood--and Bigotry may swell The sail he spreads for Heav'n with blasts from hell!
Intend some fear; Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit; And look you get a prayer book in your hand And stand between two churchmen, good my lord, For on that ground I'll make a holy descant; And be not easily won to our requests.
They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, and tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
'Tis virtue, wit, and worth, and all That men divine and sacred call; For what is worth, in anything, But so much money as 't will bring?
'Tis fortune gives us birth, But Jove alone endues the soul with worth.
O, how thy worth with manners may I sing When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring, And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
One suggestion with a spark of truth is worth a hundred repetitions of sound platitudes.
And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? The hearts bleed longest, and but heal to wear That which disfigures it.
A wound will perhaps become tolerable with length of time; but wounds which are raw shudder at the touch of the hands. [Lat., Tempore ducetur longo fortasse cicatrix; Horrent admotas vulnera cruda manus.]
Safe in a ditch he bides, With twenty trenched gashes on his head, The least a death to nature.
But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.
Among the dwellings framed by birds In field or forest with nice care, Is none that with the little wren's In snugness may compare.
My occupation is solely that of a painter. No one can argue with pictures (re descriptions in Uncle Tom's Cabin).
A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
To write beautifully, is to inscribe thoughts on paper in a flowing, imaginative way. With aspirations to intrigue and inform; its truly an art on paper, filled with emotion and thought in a smooth aesthetically brilliant way...
...your mom calls you up every other day to beg you to get a real job so she can hold her head up at your cousin's upcoming wedding receptionâ you're good with technology, have you ever considered becoming a Xerox machine repairperson?
I was learning the importance of namesâ having them, making them --but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace.
I empathize with those who yearn for a simpler world, for some bygone golden age of domestic and international tranquility. But for the mass of humanity it is an age that never was.
At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgement.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
