C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. Post (Letters)
The letter is too long by half a mile.Shakespeare.
1 Let me hear from thee by letters.Shakespeare.
2 Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words That ever blotted paper!
Shakespeare.
3 And oft the pangs of absence to remove By letters, soft interpreters of love.
Prior.
4 Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose, That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Pope.
5 Ev’n so, with all submission, I * * * * *
Send you each year a homely letter, Who may return me much a better.
Prior.
6 Tell him there’s a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news.Shakespeare.
7 A strange volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment!Douglas Jerrold.
8 Thou bringest * * * * * * letters unto trembling hands.
Tennyson.
9 Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a postscript.Shakespeare.
10 If this letter move him not, his legs cannot, I’ll give ’t him.
Shakespeare.
11 Heav’n first taught letters for some wretch’s aid, Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid.
Pope.
12 What! have I ’scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them?Shakespeare.
13 Growing one’s own choice words and fancies In orange tubs, and beds of pansies; One’s sighs and passionate declarations, In odorous rhetoric of carnations.
Leigh Hunt.
14 Good-bye—my paper’s out so nearly, I’ve only room for, Yours sincerely.
Moore.
15 Thy letter sent to prove me, Inflicts no sense of wrong; No longer wilt thou love me,— Thy letter, though, is long.
Heine.
16 The welcome news is in the letter found; The carrier’s not commission’d to expound; It speaks itself, and what it does contain, In all things needful to be known, is plain.
Dryden.
17 Go, little letter, apace, apace, Fly to the light in the valley below— Tell my wish, to her dewy blue eye.
Tennyson.
18 Line after line my gushing eyes o’erflow, Led thro’ a sad variety of woe; Now warm in love, now with’ring in my bloom, Lost in a convent’s solitary gloom!
Pope.
19 A piece of simple goodness—a letter gushing from the heart: a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature—a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.Douglas Jerrold.
20
I have a letter from her Of such contents as you will wonder at The mirth whereof so larded with my matter, That neither singly can be manifested, Without the show of both.
Shakespeare.
21 Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart’s deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,— One touch of fire,—and all the rest is mystery!
Longfellow.
22 I will touch My mouth unto the leaves, caressingly; And so wilt thou. Thus, from these lips of mine My message will go kissingly to thine, With more than Fancy’s load of luxury, And prove a true love-letter.
J. G. Saxe.
23 I read Of that glad year that once had been, In those fall’n leaves which kept their green, The noble letters of the dead: And strangely on the silence broke The silent-speaking words.
Tennyson.
24 An exquisite invention this, Worthy of Love’s most honeyed kiss,— This art of writing billet-doux— In buds, and odors, and bright hues! In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips; and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.
Leigh Hunt.
25 Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.
Emerson.
26 Letters, from absent friends, extinguish fear, Unite division, and draw distance near; Their magic force each silent wish conveys, And wafts embodied thought, a thousand ways: Could souls to bodies write, death’s pow’r were mean For minds could then meet minds with heav’n between.
Aaron Hill.
27 Belshazzar had a letter,— He never had but one; Belshazzar’s correspondent Concluded and begun In that immortal copy The conscience of us all Can read without its glasses On revelation’s wall.
Emily Dickinson.
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