Philip James Bailey Quotes
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Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.
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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.
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There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.
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Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
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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.
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America, thou half-brother of the world; with something good and bad of every land.
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See the gold sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss.
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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.
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The dew, 'Tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.
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Joys are bubble-like - what makes them bursts them too.
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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.
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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.
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Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers.
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Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.
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The wind breathes not, and the wave Walks softly as above a grave.
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Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses.
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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.
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Worthy books Are not companions – they are solitudes: We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.
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It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.
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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.
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The beautiful are never desolate; But some one alway loves them--God or man. If man abandons, God himself takes them.
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When night hath set her silver lamp high, Then is the time for study.
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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.
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Kindness is wisdom. There is none in lifeBut needs it, and may learn.