Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges

British Poet

"Music being the universal expression of the mysterious and supernatural, the best that man has ever attained to, is capable of uniting in common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than any logic offers."

"And Reason kens he herits in a haunted house. Tenants unknown assert their squalid lease of sin With earlier title than his own."

"Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, and bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song."

"Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid A million buds but stay their blossoming and trustful birds have built their nests amid The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing Till one soft shower from the south shall bid And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of Spring."

"Break Up Death Love Lovers Sad Love"

"Beauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God and Angel of his Presence thru' all creation."

"Beauty sat with me all the summer day, Awaiting the sure triumph of her eye; Nor mark'd I till we parted, how, hard by, Love in her train stood ready for his prey."

"For beauty being the best of all we know Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims Of nature."

"I know that if odour were visible, as colour is, I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds."

"I heard a linnet courting His lady in the spring."

"Centralizing our business operations into a home office campus environment has been a carefully planned process."

"But I can tell - let truth be told - That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is nought to see, So delicate his motions be."

"I live on hope and that I think do all Who come into this world."

"I think (the players) will be able to adjust pretty easy. I don't think their record has been as good in the past couple of years as it can be."

"I will not let thee go. Had not the great sun seen, I might; Or were he reckoned slow To bring the false to light, Then might I let thee go."

"Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee."

"O youth whose hope is high, Who dost to Truth aspire, Whether thou live or die, O look not back nor tire."

"So sweet love seemed that April morn. When first we kissed beside the thorn, So strangely sweet, it was not strange We thought that love could never change."

"My delight and thy delight Walking, like two angels white, In the gardens of the night."

"Since to be loved endures, To love is wise."

"The day begins to droop, - Its course is done: But nothing tells the place Of the setting sun."

"That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions, which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune."

"Simple and brave, his faith awoke, Ploughmen to struggle with their fate; Armies won battles when he spoke, And out of Chaos sprang the state."

"The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed; The short days pass unwelcomed one by one."

"The hill pines were sighing, O'ercast and chill was the day: A mist in the valley lying Blotted the pleasant May."

"The south-wind strengthens to a gale, Across the moon the clouds fly fast, The house is smitten as with a flail, The chimney shudders to the blast."

"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant."

"There are no days in life that are so memorable as those that vibrate to some stroke of the imagination."

"There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty."

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."

"There is creative reading as well as creative writing."

"There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things."

"There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and disheveled desolation."

"Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind."

"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."

"There is in nature a parallel unity which corresponds to the unity in the mind and makes it available. This methodizing mind meets no resistance in its attempts. The scattered blocks, with which it strives to form a symmetrical structure, fit. This design following after finds with joy that like design went before. Not only man puts things in a row, but things belong in a row."

"There is no knowledge that is not power."

"Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes."

"Thought is the seed of action."

"Though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till."

"Though I am weak, yet God, when prayed, Cannot withhold his conquering aid."

"Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it."

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book...in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear."

"To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light."

"Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence."

"To accomplish excellence or anything outstanding, you must listen to that whisper which is heard by you alone."

"To believe in luck ... is skepticism."

"To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven."

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius."

"We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us. ."