Great Throughts Treasury

"While many a glowworm in the shade Lights up her love torch."

"Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, glimmered the white moonshine? Day after day, day after day, we stuck, nor breath nor motion; as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

"While I approve myself, alike in praise and in blame, in close reasoning and in impassioned declamation, a steady FRIEND to the two best and surest friends of all men, TRUTH and HONESTY; I will not fear an accusation of either Presumption or Arrogance from the good and the wise, I shall pity it from the weak, and welcome it from the wicked."

"Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look at their own vices."

"Whispering tongues can poison truth."

"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flower of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 'God!' let the torrents, like a shout of nations, answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, 'God!' 'God! ' sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, and in their perilous fall shall thunder, 'God!'"

"Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang from morn to evening, all the hot fair-day, so sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me with a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye fixed with mock study on my swimming book."

"Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more."

"Willing Suspension of Disbelief."

"With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw."

"With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll."

"Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry."

"With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE."

"With what deep worship I have still adored."

"With walls and towers were girdled round."

"With unclosed lids, already had i dreamt of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang from morn to evening, all the hot fair-day, so sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me with a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!"

"Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keel."

"Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw."

"Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve."

"Would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?"

"Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots."

"Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain."

"Ye signs and wonders of the element!"

"Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element! Utter forth ' God,' and fill the hills with praise!"

"Yea! everything that is and will be free!"

"Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost."

"Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O liberty! my spirit felt thee there."

"Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew in its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!"

"Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret?"

"Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew."

"You abuse snuff! Perhaps it is the final cause of the human nose."

"You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body and mind. Partly from ill-health, and partly from an unhealthy and reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, and (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, and feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion and action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming and therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, and always in the Moult, and my whole Note is, Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow."

"You do not believe, you only believe that you believe."

"Your Sensibilities are tempestuous ? you feel Indignation at Weakness ? Now Indignation is the handsome Brother of Anger and Hatred ? His looks are lovely in terror ? yet still remember, who are his Relations."

"You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it -- low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion -- and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land."

"You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8 d. to 6 d. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all."