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| | Cæsar-like the sun |
| Gathered his robes around him as he fell. |
| 1 |
| | In winter, when the dismal rain |
| Came down in slanting lines, |
| And Wind, that grand old harper, smote |
| His thunder-harp of pines. |
| 2 |
| | Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time |
| Is England. England! |
| 3 |
| | The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore— |
| A shore that wears on her alluring brows |
| Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea, |
| That blushed a tell-tale. |
| 4 |
| | The saddest thing that can befall a soul |
| Is when it loses faith in God and woman. |
| 5 |
| | We bury love, |
| Forgetfulness grows over it like grass; |
| That is a thing to weep for, not the dead. |
| 6 |
| A man can bear a world’s contempt when he has that within which says he’s worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell. | 7 |
| A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. | 8 |
| A poem round and perfect as a star. | 9 |
| A single soul is richer than all the worlds. | 10 |
| A tender sadness drops upon my soul, like the soft twilight dropping on the world. | 11 |
| An old novel has a history of its own. | 12 |
| And winter, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines. | 13 |
| As a wild maiden, with love-drinking eyes, sees in sweet dreams a beaming youth of glory. | 14 |
| Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well. | 15 |
| Eternity doth wear upon her face the veil of time. They only see the veil, and thus they know not what they stand so near! | 16 |
| Every day travels toward death; the last only arrives at it. | 17 |
| Everything is sweetened by risk. | 18 |
| Fame, next grandest word to God! | 19 |
| God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur. | 20 |
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| God is a worker. He has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur. God is love; He yet shall wipe away Creation’s tears, and all the worlds shall summer in His smile. Why work I not? the veriest mote that sports its one-day life within the sunny beam has its stern duties. | 21 |
| Good humor and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. | 22 |
| Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. If we attempt to steal a glimpse of its features it disappears. | 23 |
| I clasp thy waist, I feel thy bosom’s beat—oh, kiss me into faintness sweet and dim! | 24 |
| If the egotist is weak, his egotism is worthless. If the egotist is strong, acute, full of distinctive character, his egotism is precious, and remains a possession of the race. | 25 |
| If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death. | 26 |
| If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness. | 27 |
| It is characteristic of pleasure that we can never recognize it to be pleasure till after it is gone. | 28 |
| It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. | 29 |
| It was his nature to blossom into song, as it is a tree’s to leaf itself in April. | 30 |
| Men praise poverty, as the African worships Mumbo Jumbo—from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate it. | 31 |
| Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps. | 32 |
| Pride’s chickens have bonny feathers, but they are an expensive brood to rear. They eat up everything, and are always lean when brought to market. | 33 |
| Some books are drenched sands, on which a great soul’s wealth lies all in heaps, like a wrecked argosy. | 34 |
| Speak no harsh words of earth; she is our mother, and few of us her sons who have not added a wrinkle to her brow. | 35 |
| Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature. | 36 |
| The garrulous sea is talking to the shore; let us go down and hear the graybeard’s speech. | 37 |
| The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time. | 38 |
| The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself. | 39 |
| The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other. | 40 |
| The only thing a man knows is himself. | 41 |
| The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night. | 42 |
| The truly great rest in the knowledge of their own deserts, nor seek the conformation of the world. | 43 |
| There is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury. | 44 |
| Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past. | 45 |
| To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required,—just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and apricots. | 46 |
| To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud. | 47 |
| To-day is always different from yesterday. | 48 |
| Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life. | 49 |
| Vanity in its idler moments is benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as to take it, and accepts as sufficient reward for its services a kind word or an approving smile. | 50 |
| We are never happy: we can only remember that we were so once. | 51 |
| We bury love; forgetfulness grows over it like grass; that is a thing to weep for, not the dead. | 52 |
| We have two lives: the soul of man is like the rolling world, one half in day, the other dipt in night; the one has music and the flying cloud, the other silence and the wakeful stars. | 53 |
| Winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles. | 54 |
| Yet through all, we know this tangled skein is in the hands of One who sees the end from the beginning; He shall yet unravel all. | 55 |
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