Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.
So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest.
How in the turmoil of life can love stand, Where there is not one heart, and one mouth and one hand.
Perhaps the greatest lesson which the lives of literary men teach us is told in a single word* Wait!
You are wind in a stark tree, you are the stark tree unbent, you are a strung bow, you are an arrow.
The elixir of life, the philosopher's stone is yours if you surrender sterile logic, trivial reason.
A stomach that is seldom empty despises common food. [Lat., Jejunus raro stomachus vulgaria temnit.]
For everything divine and human, virtue, fame, and honor, now obey the alluring influence of riches.
It is said that the propriety even of old Cato often yielded to the exciting influence of the grape.
Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.
Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.
Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
That prudery which survives youth and beauty resembles a scarecrow left in the fields after harvest.
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Such gluttony second to none Almost ended fatally When a bone choked a wolf as he gulped what he ate
A good man's prayers will from the deepest dungeon climb heaven's height, and bring a blessing down.
Men say, "By pride the angels fell from heaven." By pride they reached a place from which they fell!
The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
Alas! dear Joy, the merriest, is dead. But I have wed Peace ; and our babe, a boy, New-born, is Joy.
History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.
For peace do not hope; to be just you must break it. Still work for the minute and not for the year.
The greatest threat to any artist is surrounding themselves with people who love everything they do.
That gloomy outside, like a rusty chest, contains the shoring treasure of a soul resolved and brave.
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? ---"On death
Call the world if you please "the vale of soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world.
All hope is lost of my reception into grace; what worse? For where no hope is left, is left no fear.
God, who oft descends to visit men Unseen, and through their habitations walks To mark their doings.
The Internet amplifies power in all respects. It can grossly exaggerate the power of the individual.
The message from the hedge-leaves, Heed it, whoso thou art; Under lowly eaves Lives the happy heart.
All monarchs I hate, and the thrones they sit on, From the hector of France to the cully of Britain.
My poems please the brave: My poems, short and sincere, Have the force of steel Which forges swords.
Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.
If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.
Gay people are not in the habit of thinking of ourselves as leading our civilization, and yet we do.
Of the woes Of unhappy poverty, none is more difficult to bear Than that it heaps men with ridicule.
Bid the hungry Greek go to heaven, he will go. [Lat., Graeculus esuriens in coelum, jusseris, ibit.]
To eat at another's table is your ambition's height. [Lat., Bona summa putes, aliena vivere quadra.]
Censure pardons the ravens but rebukes the doves. [The innocent are punished and the wicked escape.]
It's not really that I'm interested in filmmaking. I'm interested in the instrument of it, you know.
The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.
There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.
Favoriting tweets has become a form of acknowledging that you've read what someone else has written.
Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.