Great Throughts Treasury

"Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage, pourest such music, that it might assuage the rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, were they not deaf to all sweet melody."

"Power, life a desolating pestilence, pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, makes slaves of men, and of the human frame, a mechanized automaton."

"Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now many a day and night? Many a weary night and day 'tis since thou are fled away."

"Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind; the foul cubs like their parents are."

"Pourest thy full heart."

"Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check."

"Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic."

"Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved's bed; and so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on."

"Rise like Lions after slumber in unvanquishable number ? Shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep had fallen on you ? Ye are many ? they are few."

"Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, but leech-like to their fainting country cling, till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, - a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field..."

"Should it be proved... that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward."

"Sing again, with your dear voice revealing atone of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one."

"Rough wind, that moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, - Wail, for the world's wrong!"

"Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again."

"See the mountains kiss high Heaven and the waves clasp one another; no sister-flower would be forgiven if it disdained its brother; and the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea - what is all this sweet work worth if thou kiss not me?"

"Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged, of one abyss, where life and truth and joy are swallowed up."

"She is gone! She is lost to me forever! She married! Married to a clod of earth; she will become insensible herself; all those fine capabilities will molder!"

"Some philosophers?and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose... that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms."

"So is Hope Changed for Despair ? one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven's high cope Fortune is god ? all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you."

"Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power! Necessity, thou mother of the world!"

"Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, all that can adorn and bless art thou ? let deeds, not words, express thine exceeding loveliness."

"Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."

"Stand ye calm and resolute, like a forest close and mute, with folded arms and looks which are weapons of unvanquished war."

"Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, spirit of night! Out of the misty eastern cave,-- where, all the long and lone daylight, thou wovest dreams of joy and fear which make thee terrible and dear,-- swift be thy flight! Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, star-inwrought! Blind with thine hair the eyes of day; kiss her until she be wearied out. Then wander o'er city and sea and land, touching all with thine opiate wand--come, long-sought! When I arose and saw the dawn, I sigh'd for thee; when light rode high, and the dew was gone, and noon lay heavy on flower and tree, and the weary day turn'd to his rest, lingering like an unloved guest, I sigh'd for thee. Thy brother death came, and cried, 'wouldst thou me?' thy sweet child sleep, the filmy-eyed, murmur'd like a noontide bee, 'shall I nestle near thy side? Wouldst thou me?'--and I replied, 'no, not thee!' death will come when thou art dead, soon, too soon--sleep will come when thou art fled. Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved night--swift be thine approaching flight, come soon, soon!"

"Tacitus says, that the Jews held God to be something eternal and supreme, neither subject to change nor to decay; therefore, they permit no statues in their cities or their temples. The universal Being can only be described or defined by negatives which deny his subjection to the laws of all inferior existences. Where indefiniteness ends, idolatry and anthropomorphism begin."

"That orbŠd maiden, with white fire laden, whom mortals call the moon, glides glimmering o?er my fleece-like floor by the midnight breezes strewn."

"Such affection and unbroken faith as temper life's worst bitterness."

"Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know, such harmonious madness from my lips would flow the world should listen then ? as I am listening now."

"Teas, where small talk dies in agonies."

"The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path ? these he cannot meet again."

"The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate."

"The babe is at peace with the womb, the corpse is at rest within the tomb. We begin in what we end."

"The absurd and execrable doctrine of vengeance, in all its shapes, seems to have been contemplated by this great moralist with the profoundest disapprobation; nor would he permit the most venerable of names to be perverted into a sanction for the meanest and most contemptible propensities incident to the nature of man. "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, that ye may be the sons of your Heavenly Father, who makes the sun to shine on the good and on the evil, and the rain to fall on the just and unjust." How monstrous a calumny have not impostors dared to advance against the mild and gentle author of this just sentiment, and against the whole tenor of his doctrines and his life, overflowing with benevolence and forbearance and compassion!"

"The breath of accusation kills an innocent name, and leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, which is a mask without it."

"The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose."

"The butchering of harmless animals cannot fail to produce much of that spirit of insane and hideous exultation in which news of a victory is related altho' purchased by the massacre of a hundred thousand men. If the use of animal food be, in consequence, subversive to the peace of human society, how unwarrantable is the injustice and barbarity which is exercised toward these miserable victims. They are called into existence by human artifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence of slavery and disease, that their bodies may be mutilated, their social feelings outraged. It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery."

"The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles, who makes all beautiful on which she smiles! What wandering shrine of soft, yet icy flame, whichever is transform'd yet still the same, and warms, but not illumines."

"The demagogues of the infant republic of the Christian sect, attaining through eloquence or artifice, to influence amongst its members, first violated (under the pretense of watching over their integrity) the institutions established for the common and equal benefit of all. These demagogues artfully silenced the voice of the moral sense among them by engaging them to attend, not so much to the cultivation of a virtuous and happy life in this mortal scene, as to the attainment of a fortunate condition after death; not so much to the consideration of those means by which the state of man is adorned and improved, as an inquiry into the secrets of the connection between God and the world ? things which, they well knew, were not to be explained, or even to be conceived. The system of equality which they established necessarily fell to the ground, because it is a system that must result from, rather than precede, the moral improvement of human kind."

"The desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow, the devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow."

"The conceptions which any nation or individual entertains of the God of its popular worship may be inferred from their own actions and opinions, which are the subjects of their approbation among their fellow-men."

"The dust of creeds outworn."

"The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error."

"The earth doth like a snake renew"

"The empire of evil spirits extends not beyond the boundaries of the grave. The unobscured irradiations from the fountain-fire of all goodness shall reveal all that is mysterious and unintelligible, until the mutual communications of knowledge and of happiness throughout all thinking natures, constitute a harmony of good that ever varies and never ends."

"The encomium of one incapable of flattery is indeed flattering."

"The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward? the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition. Legislation is, in one point of view, to be considered as an attempt to provide against the excesses of this deplorable mistake."

"The feast is such as earth, the general mother, pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles, in the embrace of autumn."

"The flood of time is rolling on; we stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone to glide in peace down death's mysterious stream. Have ye done well?"

"The flower that smiles today tomorrow dies; all that we wish to stay tempts and then flies; what is this world's delight? Lightning, that mocks the night, brief even as bright.--virtue, how frail it is!--friendship, how rare!--love, how it sells poor bliss for proud despair! But these though they soon fall, survive their joy, and all which ours we call.--whilst skies are blue and bright, whilst flowers are gay, whilst eyes that change ere night make glad the day; whilst yet the calm hours creep, dream thou - and from thy sleep then wake to weep."

"The Galilean is not a favorite of mine. So far from owing him any thanks for his favor, I cannot avoid confessing that I owe a secret grudge to his carpentership."