William C. Bryant Quotes

Adversity is the nurse of greatness which roughly rocks her patients back to health.

Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.

The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

Follow thou thy choice.

A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.

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.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.

The hushed winds their Sabbath keep.

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.

A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

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

The victory of endurance born.

Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.

Difficulty is the nurse of greatness.

It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician.

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

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

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

I grieve for life's bright promise, just shown and then withdrawn.

Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.

There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by a loving eye; There is no fragrance in April breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by.

Is not thy home among the flowers?

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.

He [William Henry Harrison] did not live long enough to prove his incapacity for the office of President.

Poetry is the eloquence of verse.

Ah! never shall the land forget How gushed the life-blood of her brave -

Truth crushed to the earth will rise again!

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.

I shall seeThe hour of death draw near to me,Hope, blossoming within my heart. . . .

So live, that when thy summons comes to join, The innumerable caravan which moves, To that mysterious realm where each shall take, His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged by his dungeon, but, 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.

The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art.

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.

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

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.

Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.

Eloquence is the poetry of prose.

Beautiful isles! beneath the sunset skies tall, silver-shafted palm-trees rise, between full orange-trees that shade the living colonade.

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

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

Still sweet with blossoms is the year's fresh prime.

All great poets have been men of great knowledge.

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

The groves were God's first temples.

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.

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

Christ taught an astonishing thing about physical death: not merely that it is an experience robbed of its terror but that as an experience it does not exist at all. To "sleep in Christ," like one that wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.