Great Throughts Treasury

"Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the heights of love's rare universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire."

"With respect to the miracles which these biographers have related, I have already declined to enter into any discussion on their nature or their existence. The supposition of their falsehood or their truth would modify in no degree the hues of the picture which is attempted to be delineated."

"Words are but holy as the deeds they cover."

"Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart."

"Worse than despair, worse than the bitterness of death, is hope."

"Worlds on worlds are rolling ever from creation to decay, like the bubbles on a river sparkling, bursting, borne away."

"Yet all love is sweet given or returned. Common as light is love, and its familiar voice wearies not ever? They who inspire it most are fortunate, as I am now: but those who feel it most are happier still after long sufferings as I shall soon become."

"Yet if we could scorn hate, and pride, and fear; if we were things born not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near."

"Ye seek for happiness ? alas, the day! Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold, Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway For which, O willing slaves to Custom old, Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold."

"You are now in London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow at once is deaf and loud, and on the shore vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures!"

"You lie?under a mistake, for this is the most civil sort of lie that can be given to a man's face. I now say what I think."

"You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights."

"You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that is in my power to honor you."

"Yet now despair itself is mild, even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, and weep away the life of care which I have borne and yet must bear, till death like sleep might steal on me, and I might feel in the warm air my cheek grow cold, and hear the sea breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony."