Joanna Baillie Quotes

Still on it creeps, Each little moment at another's heels, Till hours, days, years, and ages are made up Of such small parts as these, and men look back Worn and bewilder'd, wondering how it is.

Ah! happy is the man whose early lot Hath made him master of a furnish'd cot; Who trains the vine that round his window grows, And after setting sun his garden hoes; Whose wattled pails his own enclosure shield, Who toils not daily in another's field.

A woman is seldom roused to great and courageous exertion but when something most dear to her is in immediate danger.

To make the cunning artless, tame the rude, subdue the haughty, shake the undaunted soul; yea, put a bridle in the lion's mouth, and lead him forth as a domestic cur,--these are the triumphs of all-powerful beauty.

Me care for te laws when te laws care for me.

If my heart were not light, I would die.

A willing heart adds feather to the heel.

I wish I were with some of the wild people that run in the woods, and know nothing about accomplishments!

Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride.

The mind doth shape itself to its own wants, and can bear all things.

He that will not give some portion of his ease, his blood, his wealth, for other's good, is a poor, frozen churl.

It is so seldom that a young fellow has any inclination for the company of an old man. . .

Heaven often smites in mercy, even when the blow is severest.

Oh swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note Soft moves the dipping oar.

O mysterious Night! thou art not silent; many tongues halt thou.

I can bear scorpion's stings, tread fields of fire, in frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie, be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void, but cannot live in shame.

Pride is a fault that great men blush not to own: it is the ennobled offspring of self-love; though, it must be confessed, grave and pompous vanity, Iike a fat plebeian in a rove of office, does very often assume its name.

This will be triumph! This will be happiness! Yea, that very thing, happiness, which I have been pursuing all my life, and have never yet overtaken.

A good man's prayers will from the deepest dungeon climb heaven's height, and bring a blessing down.

The bliss even of a moment still is bliss.

I believe this earth on which we stand is but the vestibule to glorious mansions through which a moving crowd forever press.

Half-uttered praise is to the curious mind, as to the eye half-veiled beauty is, more precious than the whole.

Time never bears such moments on his wing as when he flies too swiftly to be marked.

Men's actions to futurity appear but as the events to which they are conjoined do give them consequence.

To struggle when hope is banished! To live when life's salt is gone! To dwell in a dream that's vanished! To endure, and go calmly on! The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.

I have seen the day, when, if a man made himself ridiculous, the world would laugh at him. But now, everything that is mean, disgusting, and absurd, pleases them but so much the better!

My day is closed! the gloom of night is come! a hopeless darkness settles over my fate.

It ever is the marked propensity of restless and aspiring minds to look into the stretch of dark futurity.

The plainest case in many words entangling.