Philip James Bailey Quotes
-
Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.
-
Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.
-
I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts, Each one of which down hurls me to the ground.
-
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
-
There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.
-
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.
-
America, thou half-brother of the world; with something good and bad of every land.
-
Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.
-
It is sad To see the light of beauty wane away, Know eyes are dimming, bosoms shrivelling, feet Losing their springs, and limbs their lily roundness; But it is worse to feel the heart-spring gone, To lose hope, care not for the coming thing, And feel all things go to decay within us.
-
Joys are bubble-like - what makes them bursts them too.
-
I cannot be content with less than heaven;Living, and comprehensive of all life.Thee, universal heaven, celestial all;Thee, sacred seat of intellective time;Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth,Star-throned.
-
The dew, 'Tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.
-
Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.
-
While men are what they are; while they have bad Passions to be roused up: while ruled by men; While all the powers and treasures of a land At beck of the ambitious, wrongs may be Offered, with insult; yea, while rights are worth Maintaining; freedom keeping, or life having, So long dread I, the sword shall shine.
-
The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self.
-
Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers.
-
Worthy books Are not companions – they are solitudes: We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.
-
The wind breathes not, and the wave Walks softly as above a grave.
-
The man who could withstand, with his fellow-men in single line, a charge of cavalry may lose all command of himself on the occurrence of a fire in his own house, because of some homely reminiscence unknown to the observing bystander.
-
There is an honesty which is but decided selfishness in disguise. The person who will not refrain from expressing his or her sentiments and manifesting his or her feelings, however unfit the time, however inappropriate the place, however painful this expression may be, lays claim, forsooth, to our approbation as an honest person, and sneers at those of finer sensibilities as hypocrites.
-
When night hath set her silver lamp high, Then is the time for study.
-
England! my country, great and free! Heart of the world, I leap to thee!
-
Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses.
-
Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.