C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Bailey

————amid life’s quests

That seems but worthy one—to do men good.

Ask not of me, love, what is love?

Ask what is good of God above;

Ask of the great sun what is light;

Ask what is darkness of the night;

Ask sin of what may be forgiven;

Ask what is happiness of heaven;

Ask what is folly of the crowd;

Ask what is fashion of the shroud;

Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss;

Ask of thyself what beauty is.

Dear Lord, our God and Saviour! for Thy gifts

The world were poor in thanks, though every soul

Were to do nought but breathe them, every blade

Of grass, and every atomie of earth

To utter it like dew.

Death is the universal salt of states;

Blood is the base of all things—law and war.

Dew-drops, Nature’s tears, which she

Sheds in her own breast for the fair which die.

The sun insists on gladness; but at night,

When he is gone, poor Nature loves to weep.

Dreams are rudiments

Of the great state to come. We dream what is

About to happen.

England! my country, great and free!

Heart of the world, I leap to thee!

Evil is limited. One cannot form

A scheme for universal evil.

Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which

Men are and ought to be accountable,—

If not to Thee, to those they influence.

For ivy climbs the crumbling hall

To decorate decay.

Her cheek had the pale pearly pink

Of sea shells, the world’s sweetest tint, as though

She lived, one-half might deem, on robes sopp’d

In pearly dew.

I am tired of looking on what is,

One might as well see beauty never more,

As look upon it with an empty eye.

I would this world were over. I am tired.

I love night more than day—she is so lovely;

But I love night the most because she brings

My love to me in dreams which scarcely lie.

I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts,

Each one of which down hurls me to the ground.

It is sad

To see the light of beauty wane away,

Know eyes are dimming, bosoms shrivelling, feet

Losing their springs, and limbs their lily roundness;

But it is worse to feel the heart-spring gone,

To lose hope, care not for the coming thing,

And feel all things go to decay within us.

Joys

Are bubble-like—what makes them,

Bursts them too.

Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life

But needs it and may learn.

Leave the poor

Some time for self-improvement. Let them not

Be forced to grind the bones out of their arms

For bread, but have some space to think and feel

Like moral and immortal creatures.

Let each man think himself an act of God,

His mind a thought, his life a breath of God.

Life’s but a means unto an end, that end,

Beginning, mean, and end to all things—God.

Look on the bee upon the wing ’mong flowers;

How brave, how bright his life! then mark him hiv’d,

Cramp’d, cringing in his self-built, social cell,

Thus it is in the world-hive; most where men

Lie deep in cities as in drifts.

Naught but God

Can satisfy the soul.

Not a single path

Of thought I tread, but that it leads to God.

Poetry is itself a thing of God;

He made his prophets poets; and the more

We feel of poesie do we become

Like God in love and power,—undermakers.

Poets are all who love,—who feel great truths,

And tell them.

See the gold sunshine patching,

And streaming and streaking across

The gray-green oaks; and catching,

By its soft brown beard, the moss.

She spake,

And his love-wilder’d and idolatrous soul

Clung to the airy music of her words,

Like a bird on a bough, high swaying in the wind.

Soul of the world, divine Necessity,

Servant of God, and master of all things.

Star unto star speaks light, and world to world

Repeats the passage of the universe

To God; the name of Christ—the one great word

Well worth all languages in earth or heaven.

The goodness of the heart is shown in deeds

Of peacefulness and kindness. Hand and heart

Are one thing with the good, as thou should’st be.

Do my words trouble thee? then treasure them,

Pain overgot gives peace, as death doth Heaven.

All things that speak of Heaven speak of peace.

The ground

Of all great thoughts is sadness.

The poet’s pen is the true divining rod

Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling;

Bringing to light and use, else hid from all,

The many sweet clear sources which we have

Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms;

And marks the variations of all mind

As does the needle.

The sun, centre and sire of light,

The keystone of the world-built arch of heaven.

The wind breathes not, and the wave

Walks softly as above a grave.

The world is a great poem, and the world’s

The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts.

There are whole veins of diamonds in thine eyes,

Might furnish crowns for all the Queens of earth.

Thou art a woman,

And that is saying the best and worst of thee.

Thou wilt not chronicle our sand-like sins;

For sin is small, and mean, and barren. Good

Only is great, and generous, and fruitful.

Number the mountains, not the sands, O God!

Thou wind?

Which art the unseen similitude of God

The Spirit, His most meet and mightiest sign.

Thy great name

In all its awful brevity, hath nought

Unholy breeding it, but doth bless

Rather the tongue that uses it; for me,

I ask no higher office than to fling

My spirit at Thy feet, and cry Thy name,

God! through eternity.

Thy talk is the sweet extract of all speech,

And holds mine ear in blissful slavery.

True faith nor biddeth nor abideth form,

The bended knee, the eye uplift, is all

Which men need render; all which God can bear.

What to the faith are forms? A passing speck,

A crow upon the sky.

Walk

Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast—

There is a hand above will help thee on.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

What are ye orbs?

The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?

When I forget that the stars shine in air—

When I forget that beauty is in stars—

When I forget that love with beauty is—

Will I forget thee: till then all things else.

When night hath set her silver lamp on high,

Then is the time for study.

Who never doubted never half believed,

Where doubt there truth is—’tis her shadow.

Why Mammon sits before a million hearths

Where God is bolted out from every house.

A curse is like a cloud—it passes.

All are of the race of God, and have in themselves good.

All things that speak of heaven speak of peace.

America,—half-brother of the world!

Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest, we must sow the seed.

Blessings star forth forever; but a curse is like a cloud, it passes.

Blest is he whose heart is the home of the great dead and their great thoughts.

Could I love less, I should be happier now.

Death is another life.

Death is the gate of life.

Death, thou art infinite; it is life is little.

Doubt is the shadow of truth.

Earth’s liquid jewelry, wrought of air.

Error is worse than ignorance.

Every believer is God’s miracle.

Evil and good are God’s right hand and left.

Evil then results from imperfection.

Faith is a higher facility than reason.

Fulfil thy fate! Be—do—bear—and thank God.

God’s love seemed lost upon him.

Great thoughts, like great deeds, need no trumpet.

Grief hallows hearts, even while it ages heads.

He hath no power who hath not power to use.

He is a fool who is not for love and beauty. I speak unto the young, for I am of them and always shall be.

He who has most of heart, knows most of sorrow.

Hell is more bearable than nothingness.

Hell is the wrath of God—His hate of sin.

Her step is music, and her voice is song.

How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!

I cannot be content with less than heaven.

I have a heart with room for every joy.

If all were rich, gold would be penniless.

Imagination is the air of mind.

It Is fine to stand upon some lofty mountain thought, and feel the spirit stretch into a view.

It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel.

Let us think less of men and more of God.

Life hath more awe than death.

Life is as serious a thing as death.

Life is less than nothing without love.

Long, glorious locks, which drop upon thy cheek like gold-hued cloud-flakes on the rosy morn.

Love is the art of hearts, and heart of arts.

Lowliness is the basis of every virtue; and he who goes the lowest builds the safest.

Man is one; and he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel, with a gigantic throb athwart the sea, each other’s rights and wrongs; thus are we men.

Men might be better if we better deemed of them.

Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.

My favored temple is an humble heart.

Nature means Necessity.

Necessity, like electricity, is in ourselves and all things, and no more without us than within us.

Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use.

Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.

None but the brave and beautiful can love.

Nothing comes to us too soon but sorrow.

O, there is naught on earth worth being known but God and our own souls!

Obey thy genius, for a minister it is unto the throne of fate. Draw to thy soul, and centralize the rays which are around of the Divinity.

Oh, could we lift the future’s sable shroud.

One thought settles a life, an immortality.

Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.

Remember that thy heart will shed its pleasures as thine eye its tears, and both leave loathsome furrows.

Sorrow is a stone that crushes a single bearer to the ground, while two are able to carry it with ease.

Stars which stand as thick as dew-drops on the field of heaven.

Surely the stars are images of love.

The best enjoyment is half disappointment to what we mean, or would have, in this world.

The deathbed of a day, how beautiful.

The firefly only shines when on the wing; so is it with the mind; when once we rest, we darken.

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one’s self. All sin is easy after that.

The fringe of the garment of the Lord.

The ground of all great thoughts is sadness.

The heart is its own fate.

The long days are no happier than the short ones.

The name of Christ—the one great word well worth all languages in earth or heaven.

The strongest passion which I have is honor.

The sun, God’s crest upon His azure shield, the heavens.

The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.

The temples perish, but the God still lives.

The truth of truths is love.

The value of a thought cannot be told.

The worst men often give the best advice.

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

’Tis man himself makes his own god and his own hell.

’Tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.

We live not to ourselves, our work is life.

We love and live in power; it is the spirit’s end. Mind must subdue; to conquer is its life.

We must not pluck death from the Maker’s hand.

What men call accident is God’s own part.

When pride thaws, look for floods.

Where imperfection ceaseth, heaven begins.

Who can mistake great thoughts? They seize upon the mind; arrest and search and shake it; bow the tall soul as by wind; rush over it like rivers over reeds.

Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more.

Worthy books are not companions, they are solitudes; we lose ourselves in them, and all our cares.

Youth might be wise; we suffer less from pains than pleasures.

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