William C. Bryant famous quotes

Alas! to seize the moment When the heart inclines to heart, And press a suit with passion, Is not a woman's part. If man come not to gather The roses where they stand, They fade among their foliage, They cannot seek his hand.
-- William C. Bryant

#Passion #Heart #Men

Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.
-- William C. Bryant

#Nature #Teaching #Sky

The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep to-night.
-- William C. Bryant

#Summer #Moon #Night

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.
-- William C. Bryant

#Years #October #Sun

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.
-- William C. Bryant

#Strength #Children #Greatness

Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.
-- William C. Bryant

#Positive #Attitude #Winning

All that tread, the globe are but a handful to the tribes, that slumber in its bosom.
-- William C. Bryant

#Death #Dying #Slumber

The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee.
-- William C. Bryant

#Art #Gay #Laughing

Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke.
-- William C. Bryant

#Tyrants #Reign #Yoke

These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.
-- William C. Bryant

#Struggle #Fate #Tides

Sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
-- William C. Bryant

#Death #Dream #Lying

Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
-- William C. Bryant

#Death #Brother #Rocks

It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician...
-- William C. Bryant

#Physicians #Medical #Said

I grieve for life's bright promise, just shown and then withdrawn.
-- William C. Bryant

#Grieving #Promise

The little windflower, whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.
-- William C. Bryant

#Spring #Eye #Blue

Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
-- William C. Bryant

#Spring #Eye #Water

Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.
-- William C. Bryant

#Running #Get Well #Errors

The victory of endurance born.
-- William C. Bryant

#Victory #Endurance #Born

When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multiple OF golden chalices to humming birds And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.
-- William C. Bryant

#Flower #Air #Wind

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.
-- William C. Bryant

#Love #Language #Speak

Gently - so have good men taught - Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide Into the new; the eternal flow of things, Like a bright river of the fields of heaven, Shall journey onward in perpetual peace.
-- William C. Bryant

#Death #Grief #Journey

The summer day is closed - the sun is set: Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red west. The green blade of the ground Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun; Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil, From bursting cells, and in their graves await Their resurrection. Insects from the pools Have filled the air awhile with humming wings, That now are still for ever; painted moths Have wandered the blue sky, and died again
-- William C. Bryant

#Summer #Flower #Garden

Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
-- William C. Bryant

#Life #Flower #Rose

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.
-- William C. Bryant

#Nature #Flower #Rose

Showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back.
-- William C. Bryant

#Spring #Sunshine #Bird

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, On the lake below thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, And dark and silent the water lies; And out of that frozen mist the snow In wavering flakes begins to flow; Flake after flake, They sink in the dark and silent lake.
-- William C. Bryant

#Lying #Eye #Dark

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste Stream down the snows, till the air is white, As, myriads by myriads madly chased, They fling themselves from their shadowy height. The fair, frail creatures of middle sky, What speed they make, with their grave so nigh; Flake after flake, To lie in the dark and silent lake!
-- William C. Bryant

#Lying #Dark #Air

Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.
-- William C. Bryant

#Mean #Self #Unhappy

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way.
-- William C. Bryant

#Way #Care #Providence

Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners.
-- William C. Bryant

#Music #Entertainment #Study

Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines! In the soft light of these serenest skies; From the broad highland region, black with pines, Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise, Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.
-- William C. Bryant

#Beautiful #Light #Sky

The journalist should be on his guard against publishing what is false in taste or exceptionable in morals.
-- William C. Bryant

#Taste #Moral #Journalism

Features, the great soul's apparent seat.
-- William C. Bryant

#Soul #Faces

Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.
-- William C. Bryant

#Art #Imagination #Most Powerful

The sad and solemn night hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires; The glorious host of light walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; All through her silent watches, gliding slow, Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.
-- William C. Bryant

#Stars #Dark #Night

The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other.
-- William C. Bryant

#Determination #Dirty #Hard Work

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold The pur0ple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.
-- William C. Bryant

#Sweet #Fall #Sunshine

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.
-- William C. Bryant

#Law #Justice #Generosity

Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.
-- William C. Bryant

#Autumn #Years #Lasts

Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.
-- William C. Bryant

#Beautiful #Earth #Pages

Eloquence is the poetry of prose.
-- William C. Bryant

#Eloquence #Prose

Flowers spring up unsown and die ungathered.
-- William C. Bryant

#Spring #Flower

Ah! never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave -
-- William C. Bryant

#Memorial Day #Blood #Land

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase is fruits of innocence and blessedness.
-- William C. Bryant

#Roots #Fruit #Innocence

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.
-- William C. Bryant

#Sadness #Years #Wind

Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson.
-- William C. Bryant

#Autumn #Gold #Woods

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue....
-- William C. Bryant

#Autumn #Blue #Heaven

The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows...
-- William C. Bryant

#Flower #Air #Rose

I gazed upon the glorious sky And the green mountains round, And thought that when I came to lie At rest within the ground, 'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June When brooks send up a cheerful tune, And groves a joyous sound, The sexton's hand, my grave to make, The rich, green mountain-turf should break.
-- William C. Bryant

#Spring #Lying #June