So I thought I’d let a few other good people talk instead.
How about Life?
I find the great thing in this world is, not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
Goethe
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true
L.J., Cardinal Suenans
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up [1807]
I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path and I will leave a trail.
Muriel Strode
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If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
Walt Whtiman, Leaves of Grass
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
To boldly go where no man has gone before
Opening of Star Trek
Not all those who wander are lost;
J.R.R. Tolkien
Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars…
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
No man is worth his salt who is not willing to risk his body, risk his well being, to risk his life in a great cause.
Teddy Roosevelt
spa\Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler
Complicated rules to adjust behavior are a weak substitute for simple principles.
Mary Wollstonecraft.
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The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
Erma Bombeck, American humorist
One has nothing to live for who has nothing worth dying for.
Me
When I hear somebody sigh that “Life is hard,” I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”
Sydney J. Harris, American journalist
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Illigitimii non corborandum.
Harvard University, “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard“
What about Love?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barret Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese
It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.
George Whyte-Melville, Scottish author
And yet I wish but for the thing I have.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite.
Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene ii, Line 140
Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books;
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
Romeo and Juliet, Act: II, Scene: ii, Line: 156
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Romeo and Juliet, Act: II, Scene: vi, Line: 14
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
I shall love you in December
With the love I gave in May!
John Alexander Joyce Question and Answer, st. 8
The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw, Charteris, The Philanderer
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First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
George Bernard Shaw, Broadbent, John Bull’s Other Island
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The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
Benjamin Disraeli, English prime minister
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In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all the others all she loves is love.
Alfred, Lord Byron
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
John Donne, The Bait
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.
Sir Walter Ralegh, The Nymph’s Reply to the Passionate Shepherd
Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
O tender yearning, sweet hoping!
The golden time of first love!
The eye sees the open heaven,
The heart is intoxicated with bliss;
O that the beautiful time of young love
Could remain green forever.
Johann Friedrich von Schiller, The Song of the Bell
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to
matrimony in a moment.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
All mankind loves a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody loves a lover
Doris Day, singer and actress
People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus.
Marcel Proust, French novelist
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Love doesn’t grow on the trees like apples in Eden it’s something you have to make. And you must use your imagination to make it too, just like anything else. It’s all work, work.
Joyce Cary, British novelist
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Women fall in love through their ears and men through their eyes.
Woodrow Wyatt, British journalist, Labour politician
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To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.
Helen Rowland, American journalist
The voice of the turtledove speaks out. It says:
Day breaks, which way are you going?
Lay off, little bird,
must you so scold me?
I found my lover on his bed,
and my heart was sweet to excess.
Love Songs of the New Kingdom c. 1550-1080 BC, Song no. 14
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The Song of Solomon 2:10-12
Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day’s dusk,
Trembles before your glory.
Sophocles, Antigone, (Ode III
)
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
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Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand.
William Shakespeare, Love for Love, Act IV, sc. iii
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.
William Wordsworth, The Sparrows’ Nest, st. 2
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
George Sand, Letter to Lina Calamatta
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall
Faint heart never won fair lady!
Nothing venture, nothing win
Blood is thick, but water’s thin
In for a penny, in for a pound
It’s Love that makes the world go round!
Sir William S. Gilbert, Iolanthe, Act II
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.
William Butler Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Vacillation, III, st. 1
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In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves;
later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell, Earl Russell, Marriage and Morals [1929], ch. 16
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Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost
Originally published May 29, 2017
December 31, 2018 at 03:46
I love your collection of quotes, and how you put them into categories!