Familiar Quotations, - [best romance ebooks .txt] 📗
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And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tailed words in osity and ation.
The Monks and the Giants. Canto i. Line 6.
A sudden thought strikes me,—let us swear an eternal friendship.[462:1]
The Rovers. Act i. Sc. 1.
[462:1] See Otway, page 280.
My fair one, let us swear an eternal friendship.—Molière: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, act iv. sc. 1.
[463]
DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 1769-1852.Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
Despatch, 1815.
It is very true that I have said that I considered Napoleon's presence in the field equal to forty thousand men in the balance. This is a very loose way of talking; but the idea is a very different one from that of his presence at a battle being equal to a reinforcement of forty thousand men.
Mem. by the Duke,[463:1] Sept. 18, 1836.
Circumstances over which I have no control.[463:2]
I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.[463:3]
Upon seeing the first Reformed Parliament.
There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.[463:4]
Letter to Mr. Huskisson.
[463:1] Stanhope: Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p. 81.
[463:2] This phrase was first used by the Duke of Wellington in a letter, about 1839 or 1840.—Sala: Echoes of the Week, in London Illustrated News, Aug. 23, 1884. Greville, Mem., ch. ii. (1823), gives an earlier instance.
[463:3] Sir William Fraser, in "Words on Wellington" (1889), p. 12, says this phrase originated with the Duke. Captain Gronow, in his "Recollections," says it originated with the Duke of York, second son of George III., about 1817.
[463:4] This gave rise to the slang expression, "And no mistake."—Words on Wellington, p. 122.
JOHN TOBIN. 1770-1804.The man that lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch
Whom 't were gross flattery to name a coward.
The Honeymoon. Act ii. Sc. 1.
She 's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely,—
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.
The Honeymoon. Act iii. Sc. 4.
[464]
GEORGE CANNING. 1770-1827.Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.
I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.
So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides
The Derby dilly, carrying three INSIDES.
The Loves of the Triangles. Line 178.
And finds, with keen, discriminating sight,
Black 's not so black,—nor white so very white.
New Morality.
Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet,—perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend![464:1]
New Morality.
I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.
The King's Message, Dec. 12, 1826.
No, here 's to the pilot that weathered the storm!
The Pilot that weathered the Storm.
[464:1] "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies." The French Ana assign to Maréchal Villars this aphorism when taking leave of Louis XIV.
WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER. 1770-1834.Too late I stayed,—forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of time[464:2]
That only treads on flowers.
Lines to Lady A. Hamilton.
[464:2] See Shakespeare, page 74.
[465]
JOSEPH HOPKINSON. 1770-1842.Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies!
Hail, Columbia!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[465:1] 1770-1850.Oh, be wiser thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.
Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree.
And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.
Guilt and Sorrow. Stanza 41.
Action is transitory,—a step, a blow;
The motion of a muscle, this way or that.
The Borderers. Act iii.
Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.[465:2]
The Borderers. Act iv. Sc. 2.
[466]
A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
We are Seven.
O Reader! Had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in everything.
Simon Lee.
I 've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.
Simon Lee.
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
Lines written in Early Spring.
And 't is my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
Lines written in Early Spring.
Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
Expostulation and Reply.
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you 'll grow double!
Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks!
Why all this toil and trouble?
The Tables Turned.
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
The Tables Turned.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
The Tables Turned.
The bane of all that dread the Devil.
The Idiot Boy.
[467]
Sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
That best portion of a good man's life,—
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
That blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
The fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite,—a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thoughts supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
But hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,—
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
[468]
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life.
Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.
Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel
No self-reproach.
The Old Cumberland Beggar.
As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die!
The Old Cumberland Beggar.
There 's something in a flying horse,
There 's something in a huge balloon.
Peter Bell. Prologue. Stanza 1.
The common growth of Mother Earth
Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.
Peter Bell. Prologue. Stanza 27.
Full twenty times was Peter feared,
For once that Peter was respected.
Peter Bell. Part i. Stanza 3.
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
Peter Bell. Part i. Stanza 12.
The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart; he never felt
The witchery of the soft blue sky!
Peter Bell. Part i. Stanza 15.
On a fair prospect some have looked,
And felt, as I have heard them say,
As if the moving time had been
A thing as steadfast as the scene
On which they gazed themselves away.
Peter Bell. Part i. Stanza 16.
As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!
Peter Bell. Part i. Stanza 26.[468:1]
[469]
One of those heavenly days that cannot die.
Nutting.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,—
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways.
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She dwelt among the untrodden ways.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh
The difference to me!
She dwelt among the untrodden ways.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.
Three years she grew in Sun and Shower.
May no rude hand deface it,
And its forlorn hic jacet!
Ellen Irwin.
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love and thought and joy.
The Sparrow's Nest.
The child is father of the man.[469:1]
My heart leaps up when I behold.
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
The Cock is crowing.
[470]
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
To a Butterfly. I 've watched you now a full half-hour.
Often have I sighed to measure
By myself a lonely pleasure,—
Sighed to think I read a book,
Only read, perhaps, by me.
To the Small Celandine.
As high as we have mounted in delight,
In our dejection do we sink as low.
Resolution and Independence. Stanza 4.
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
Resolution and Independence. Stanza 6.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough, along the mountain-side.
By our own spirits we are deified;
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Resolution and Independence. Stanza 7.
That heareth not the loud winds when
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