Quotes by Poets - Page 72

Conscience does make cowards of us all.
William Shakespeare
Conscience is a coward and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Oliver Goldsmith
Choice of attention to pay attention to this and ignore that is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.
W.H. Auden
While the work or play is on ... don't constantly feel you ought to be doing the other.
Franklin P. Adams
If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus you must not be thinking about yourself and equally you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The first law of success ... is concentration: to bend all the energies to one point and to go directly to that point looking neither to the right nor the left.
William Matthews
Beware of dissipating your powers strive constantly to concentrate them.
Johann von Goethe
When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything each of them generally gets that which he likes least.
Alexander Pope
Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof it is a temporary expedient often wise in party politics almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
It is only when I dally with what I am about look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.
Sir Walter Scott
Some say compared to Bononcini That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle: Strange all this difference should be 'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!
John Byrom
The prickly thorn often bears soft roses.
Ovid
The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.
Pietro Metastasio
Tis always morning somewhere in the world.
Richard Hengest Horne
Tell me thy company and I will tell thee what thou art.
Miguel de Cervantes
To see her is to love her And love but her forever For Nature made her what she is And never made another.
Robert Burns
What is there in the vale of life Half so delightful as a wife When Friendship love and peace combine To stamp the marriage bond divine?
William Cowper
Of all the paths [that] lead to a woman's love Pity's the straightest.
Francis Beaumont
[Being in love] is something like poetry. Certainly you can analyze it and expound its various senses and intentions but there is always something left over mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.
Muriel Spark
What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings Idler or bungler or both he is willing To fork out his copper and pocket your shilling.
Ebenezer Elliott
Strength is a matter of the made-up mind.
John Beecher
The middle of the road is where the white line is and that's the worst place to drive.
Robert Frost
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri
Either do not attempt at all or go through with it.
Ovid
Men like snails lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
Walter Savage Landor
The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers got hungry scolded God were egotistical or impatient in their turns made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.
Phyllis McGinley
Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.
Henrik Ibsen
Colors speak all languages.
Joseph Addison
Whenas in silks my Julia goes Then then methinks how sweetly flows The liquefaction of her clothes!
Robert Herrick
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy But not express'd in fancy rich not gaudy For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
William Shakespeare
The soul of this man is his clothes.
William Shakespeare
If dirt was trumps what hands you would hold!
Charles Lamb
Cleverness is serviceable for everything sufficient for nothing.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.
John Ciardi
All will come out in the washing.
Miguel de Cervantes
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S Eliot
Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
George Santayana
We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond and on these faces there are no smiles.
Hilaire Belloc
Let us humour if we can The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.
W.H. Auden
In the busy haunts of men.
Felicia D. Hemans
Far from gay cities and the way of men.
Homer
God made the country and man made the town.
William Cowper
The people are the city.
William Shakespeare
The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.
Walter Scott
Cathedrals Luxury liners laden with souls Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
W.H. Auden
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old familiar carols play And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Hark the herald angels sing "Glory to the new-born king." Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled!
Charles Wesley
See the Gospel Church secure And founded on a Rock! All her promises are sure Her bulwarks who can shock? Count her every precious shrine Tell to after-ages tell Fortified by power divine The Church can never fail.
Charles Wesley
Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house Not a creature was stirring - not even a mouse The stockings were hung by the chimney with care In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
Clement C. Moore
I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The itch of disputing is the scab of the churches.
Sir Henry Wotton
God will forgive me. That's his business.
Heinrich Heine
Christians have burned each other quite persuaded That all the apostles would have done as they did.
Lord Byron
A Christian is a man who feels Repentance on a Sunday For what he did on Saturday And is going to do on Monday.
Thomas R. Ybarra
The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
George Santayana
Servant of God well done! Well hast thou fought The better fight.
John Milton
When to elect there is but one Tis Hobson's Choice take that or none.
Thomas Ward
Christianity ruined emperors but saved peoples.
Alfred de Musset
There's small choice in rotten apples.
William Shakespeare
The sages and heroes of history are receding from us and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrower and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.
William Ellery Channing