John Armstrong famous quotes

Impious! forbear thus the first general hail. To disappoint, Increase and multiply, To shed thy blossoms thro' the desert air, And sow thy perish'd offspring in the winds.
-- John Armstrong

#Air #Wind #Desert

For wisest ends this universal Power Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life Subsists, by which we only live, all life Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd. Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct, That flame for propagation, soon would roll A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven.
-- John Armstrong

#Flames #Heaven #Earth

Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, expels diseases, softens every pain.
-- John Armstrong

#Pain #Grief #Carpe Diem

Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind supports the body too.
-- John Armstrong

#Health #Support #Mind

The athletic fool, to whom what heaven denied of soul, is well compensated in limbs.
-- John Armstrong

#Heaven #Athletic #Soul

You don't ask a juggler which ball is highest in priority. Success is to do it all.
-- John Armstrong

#Priorities #Balls

Tis not for mortals always to be blest.
-- John Armstrong

#Blessing

For want of timely care Millions have died of medicable wounds.
-- John Armstrong

#Death #Science #Care

How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose; on him the balmy dews Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.
-- John Armstrong

#Dream #Sleep #Toil

Virtue and sense are one; and, trust me, still A faithless heart betrays the head unsound.
-- John Armstrong

#Heart #Trust Me #Virtue

Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, Is the best gift of Heaven: a happiness That even above the smiles and frowns of fate Exalts great Nature's favourites: a wealth That ne'er encumbers, nor can be transferr'd.
-- John Armstrong

#Fate #Heaven #Soul

There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust.
-- John Armstrong

#Boards #Way #Waste

When the tribal groups of december trade Seated in the figure of crocodile And songs are sung and deals discussed, are made Real. All... For more than one reason they smile. These codes are writ in secret, feeling fine To keep what's private to my self since we All must face our maker in our own ryhme And reasons for being ( from regrets) free So let the memory of your glory Be the tenderness heartfelt love starkly In the sky of my mind vast and pretty Evermore glittering simplicity Where in the truth of country grows sober And sunshines through fog to radiate wonder
-- John Armstrong

#Country #Song #Nature

Money can purchase the symbols but not the causes of serenity and buoyancy. In a straightforward way we must agree that money cannot buy happiness.
-- John Armstrong

#Serenity #Buoyancy #Way

Much had he read, Much more had he seen; he studied from the life, And in th' original perus'd mankind.
-- John Armstrong

#Life #Peru #Mankind

You can't help people that don't want to be helped.
-- John Armstrong

#People #Want #Helping

Tis not too late to-morrow to be brave.
-- John Armstrong

#Bravery #Too Late #Be Brave

Hope is the first thing to take some sort of action.
-- John Armstrong

#Hopeful #Firsts #Action

Imagination paints a charming view of the future, conveniently adapted to the demands of our current emotion.
-- John Armstrong

#Views #Imagination #Demand

We need to be free if we are to love.
-- John Armstrong

#Needs

One’s relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one’s sense of identity, it shapes one’s attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money.
-- John Armstrong

#Attitude #Color #Ideas

When you're doing wrong, you're gonna think wrong.
-- John Armstrong

#Thinking

Our greatest good, and what we least can spare, Is hope: the last of all our evils, fear.
-- John Armstrong

#Hope #Evil #Lasts

Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
-- John Armstrong

#Thrones #Weight #Empires

For pale and trembling anger rushes in With faltering speech, and eyes that wildly stare, Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas, Desperate and armed with more than human strength.
-- John Armstrong

#Anger #Eye #Sea

Your friends avoid you, brutishly transform'd They hardly know you, or if one remains To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.
-- John Armstrong

#Heaven #Wish #Wells

What avails it that indulgent Heaven From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come, If we, ingenious to torment ourselves, Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own? Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb, Appal the surest hour that life bestows. Serence, and master of yourself, prepare For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven.
-- John Armstrong

#Spring #Eye #Heaven

Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd; Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave, Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool. But for one end, one much-neglected use, Are riches worth your care; (for nature's wants Are few, and without opulence supplied;) This noble end is, to produce the soul; To show the virtues in their fairest light; To make humanity the minister Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast The generous luxury the gods enjoy.
-- John Armstrong

#Sunshine #Luxury #Light

He knows enough, the mariner, who knows Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil, What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause Charybdis rages in the Ionian wave; Whence those impetuous currents in the main Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.
-- John Armstrong

#Sea #Heaven #Mind

There is, they say, (and I believe there is), A spark within us of th' immortal fire, That animates and moulds the grosser frame; And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven; Its native seat, and mixes with the gods.
-- John Armstrong

#Believe #Fire #Heaven

Good native Taste, tho' rude, is seldom wrong, Be it in music, painting, or in song: But this, as well as other faculties, Improves with age and ripens by degrees.
-- John Armstrong

#Song #Rude #Age

Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine, Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine. Better be born with taste to little rent Than the dull monarch of a continent; Without this bounty which the gods bestow, Can Fortune make one favorite happy? No.
-- John Armstrong

#Dull #Littles #Taste

Toil, and be strong; by toil the flaccid nerves Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone: The greener juices are by toil subdued, Mellow'd, and subtilis'd; the vapid old Expell'd, and all the rancor of the blood.
-- John Armstrong

#Strong #Blood #Vapid

Sometimes pantheists will use the term "pandeism" to underscore that they share with the deists the idea that God is not a personal God who desires to be worshipped.
-- John Armstrong

#Ideas #Desire #Use

Ye generous maids, revenge your sex's wrong; Let not the mean destroyer e'er approach Your sacred charms. Now muster all your pride, Contempt and scorn, that, shot from Beauty's eye, Confounds the mighty impudent, and smites The front unknown to shame.
-- John Armstrong

#Sex #Revenge #Mean

The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys To every particle that moves or lives.
-- John Armstrong

#Moving #Blood #Water

Autumn ripens in the summer's ray.
-- John Armstrong

#Summer #Autumn #Rays

Ye who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind, Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickening, and the living world Exhal'd, to sully heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality.
-- John Armstrong

#Pain #Air #Cities

We know great Nature's pow'r, Mother of things, whose vast unbounded sway From the deep centre all around extends Wide to the flaming barriers of the world. We feel her power; we strive not to repress (Vainly repress'd, or to deformity) Her lawful growth: ours be the task alone To check her rude excrescencies, to prune Her wanton overgrowth, and where she strays In uncouth shapes, to lead her gently back, With prudent hand, to form and better use.
-- John Armstrong

#Mother #Nature #Hands

Then love of pleasure sways each heart, and we From that no more than from ourselves can fly. Blameless when govern'd well. But where it errs Extravagant, and wildly leads to ill, Public or private, there its curbing pow'r Cool reason must exert.
-- John Armstrong

#Heart #Reason #Pleasure

How sickly grow, How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope To feel, the genial vigor of the sun!
-- John Armstrong

#Mountain #Vigor #Sun

Ye youths and virgins, when your generous blood Has drunk the warmth of fifteen summers, now The loves invite; now to new rapture wakes The finish'd sense: while stung with keen desire The madd'ning boy his bashful fetters bursts; And, urg'd with secret flames, the riper maid, Conscious and shy, betrays her smarting breast.
-- John Armstrong

#Summer #Boys #Flames

What Nature bids is good, is wise, and faultless we obey.
-- John Armstrong

#Wise

The boy may wrestle, when Night--working Fancy steals him to the arms Of nymph oft wish'd awake, and, 'mid the rage Of the soft tumult, ev'ry turgid cell Spontaneous disembogues its lucid store, Bland and of azure tinct.
-- John Armstrong

#Boys #Night #Cells

To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of th'harmonious frame.
-- John Armstrong

#Moving #Mind #Delight

If from thy secret bed Of luxury unbidden offspring rise, Let them be kindly welcom'd to the day.
-- John Armstrong

#Luxury #Secret #Bed

This restless world Is full of chances, which by habit's power To learn to bear is easier than to shun.
-- John Armstrong

#World #Bears #Chance