Great Throughts Treasury

"When we first saw the news of the bombing we didn't know he was out there [in Bali]."

"Where great whales come sailing by, sail and sail, with unshut eye, round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday?"

"Wherever there is cupidity, there the blessing of the Gospel cannot rest. The actual poor, therefore, may altogether fail to be objects of that blessing, the actual rich may be the objects of it in the highest degree."

"Whispering from her [Oxford's] towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age...Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!"

"Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all."

"Why faintest thou! I wander?d till I died. Roam on! The light we sought is shining still. Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill, our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside."

"With close-lipp'd Patience for our only friend, Sad Patience, too near neighbor to Despair."

"Who hesitate and falter life away, and lose tomorrow the ground won today."

"Who prop, thou ask'st in these bad days, my mind? He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men, saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, and Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind."

"Who ordered, that their longing's fire should be, as soon as kindled, cooled? Who renders vain their deep desire?? A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea."

"With women the heart argues, not the mind."

"Without poetry our science will appear incomplete, and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry."

"With aching hands and bleeding feet we dig and heap, lay stone on stone; we bear the burden and the heat of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return all we have built as we discern."

"Without some strong motive to the contrary, men united by the pursuit of a clearly defined common aim of irresistible attractiveness naturally coalesce; and since they coalesce naturally, they are clearly right in coalescing and find their advantage in it."

"Wordsworth has gone from us ? and ye, ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime had fallen ? on this iron time of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears."

"Yes ! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone."

"Yet they, believe me, who await no gifts from Chance, have conquer'd Fate."

"Yes: in the sea of life enisl?d, with echoing straits between us thrown, dotting the shoreless watery wild, we mortal millions live alone."

"Youth dreams a bliss on this side of death. It dreams a rest, if not more deep, more grateful than this marble sleep; It hears a voice within it tell: Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires."

"You will be out of the lives of free people everywhere. Your face will be off the coins and with that, your arrogant, undue influence. Everywhere... Everywhere... Every..."

"Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, more fortunate, alas! Than we, which without hardness will be sage, and gay without frivolity. Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; but, while we wait, allow our tears!"

"Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night in ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. I see her veil draw soft across the day, I feel her slowly chilling breath invade the cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; I feel her finger light laid pausefully upon life?s headlong train; ? The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, the heart less bounding at emotion new, and hope, once crush?d, less quick to spring again."