David Swing famous quotes

The sermon is now the true poppy of literature.
-- David Swing

#Literature #Poppies

As the highly colored birds do not fly around in the dull, leaden plains of a sandy desert, but amid all the settings of nature’s leaves and blossoms, and lights and shades—nature’s framework of their picture—so there are truths which do not appear well in arid fields of philosophic inquiry, but which demand the colored air and the bowers of poetry to be the setting of their charms.
-- David Swing

#Light #Air #Bird

The modern Gamaliel should teach ethics. Ethics is the science of human duty. Arithmetic tells man how to count his money; ethics how he should acquire it, whether by honesty or fraud. Geography is a map of the world; ethics is a beautiful map of duty. This ethics is not Christianity, it is not even religion; but it is the sister of religion, because the path of duty is in full harmony, as to quality and direction, with the path of God.
-- David Swing

#Beautiful #Honesty #Men

The life of Lincoln should never be passed by in silence by young or old. He touched the log cabin and it became the palace in which greatness was nurtured. He touched the forest and it became to him a church in which the purest and noblest worship of God was observed. His occupation has become associated in our minds with the integrity of the life he lived. In Lincoln there was always some quality that fastened him to the people and taught their to keep time to the music of his heart.
-- David Swing

#Integrity #Heart #Greatness

It is often lamented by the churchmen that Washington and Lincoln possessed little religion except that found in the word 'God.' All that can here be affirmed is that what the religion of those two men lacked in theological details it made up in greatness. Their minds were born with a love of great principles... There are few instances in which a mind great enough to reach great principles in politics has been satisfied with a fanatical religion... It must not be asked for Washington and Lincoln that, having reached greatness in political principles, they should have loved littleness in piety.
-- David Swing

#Greatness #Men #Two

Rest is valuable only so far as it is a contrast. Pursued as an end, it becomes a most pitiable condition.
-- David Swing

#Valuable #Contrast

The beauty of the sunbeam lies partly in the fact that God does not keep it; he gives it away to us all.
-- David Swing

#Lying #Giving #Doe

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

It is always in season for old men to learn.

Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.

The evils of mortals are manifold; nowhere is trouble of the same wing seen.

Whoever is new to power is always harsh.

Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it — make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me —write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.

All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.

I survived, carried on, glad to be like a weed, a wild red poppy, rooted in life.