Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.
The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.
A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being.
For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
I conceive disgust at these impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tombstone.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free, First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea.
I ask and wish not to appear More beauteous, rich or gay: Lord, make me wiser every year, And better every day.
I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.
Oh stay! oh stay! Joy so seldom weaves a chain Like this to-night, that oh 't is pain To break its links so soon.
For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.
I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content--doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.
Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.
A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.
I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
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.
Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.
You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.
I give thee all,-I can no more, Though poor the off'ring be; My heart and lute are all the store That I can bring to thee.
Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years,- One minute of heaven is worth them all.
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! Supreme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only duty.
When twilight dews are falling soft Upon the rosy sea, love, I watch the star whose beam so oft Has lighted me to thee, love.
(The pig) hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure - and for such a tomb might be content to die.
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
If thou would'st have me sing and play As once I play'd and sung, First take this time-worn lute away, And bring one freshly strung.
A flow'ret crushed in the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood, Was in her cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying
Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion.
Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book.
Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing.
I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.
As half in shade and half in sun This world along its path advances, May that side the sun 's upon Be all that e'er shall meet thy glances!
Science has succeeded to poetry, no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil?
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.
How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realised.
Sassafras wood boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar hath to some a delicacy beyond the China luxury.
In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces.
While childhood, and while dreams, producing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth.
How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pristine stature! where is now the space, which he occupied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye?
Who has not felt how sadly sweet The dream of home, the dream of home, Steals o'er the heart, too soon to fleet, When far o'er sea or land we roam?
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.
Dr Parr...asked him, how he had acquired his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb replied, 'I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue.'
Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!