Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.
Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils.
Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford.
And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
He went like one that hath been stunn’d, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn.
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.
So lonely ’twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.
If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.
All powerful souls have kindred with each other.
How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance.
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing, And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.
I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.
The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
An undevout poet is an impossibility.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.