Great Throughts Treasury

"The living need charity more than the dead."

"And he sang every night as he went to bed. 'Let us be happy down here below: the living should live, though the dead be dead.' Said the jolly old pedagogue long ago."

"But leave me to my beer! Gold is dross, love is loss, so if I gulp my sorrows down, or see them drown in foamy draughts of old nut-brown, then I do wear the crown, without the cross!"

"Here with my beer I sit, while golden moments flit: alas! They pass unheeded by: and as they fly, I, being dry, sit idly sipping here, my beer."

"'Learn while you're young', he often said, 'there is much to enjoy, down here below, life for the living, and rest for the dead!'"

"O sweet September, they first breezes bring the dry leaf's rustle and the squirrel's laughter, the cool fresh air whence health and vigor spring and promise of exceeding joy hereafter."

"Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence their importance."