Great Throughts Treasury

"Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful...How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural--you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"The problem that faces us is the problem of awakening. What we lack is not an ideology or doctrine that will save the world. What we lack is mindfulness of what we are, of what our situation really is. We need to wake up in order to rediscover our human sovereignty. We are riding a horse that is running out of control. The way of salvation is a new culture in which human beings are encouraged to rediscover their deepest nature." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"There is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"True love is without possessiveness. You love and still you are free, and the other person is also free." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"The great person will do things rare to do; the small cannot do rare things." - Thiruvalluvar NULL

"Sufficient to each day are the duties to be done and the trials to be endured. God never built a Christian strong enough to carry today's duties and tomorrow's anxieties piled on the top of them." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

"Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited." - Thomas Berry

"Greater sins do sooner startle the soul, and awaken and rouse up the soul to repentance, than lesser sins do. Little sins often slide into the soul, and breed, and work secretly and undiscernably in the soul, till they come to be so strong, as to trample upon the soul, and to cut the throat of the soul." - Thomas Brooks

"We are ne’er like angels till our passion dies." - Thomas Dekker

"When you find a man who knows his job and is willing to take responsibility, keep out of his way and don't bother him with unnecessary supervision. What you may think is cooperation is nothing but interference." - Thomas Dreier

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence. Peace and rest at length have come all the day’s long toil is past, and each heart is whispering, “Home, home at last.”" - Thomas Hood

"Never had he lost himself in a book as one does when that single work seems the most important in the world; unique, a little, all-embracing universe, into which one plunges and submerges oneself in order to draw nourishment out of every syllable." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"There is an artistry so deep, so primordial and elemental, that no yearning seems to it sweeter and more worthy of tasting than that for the raptures of common-placeness." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison." - Thomas Merton

"Do the one task which God has imposed upon us in the world today. That task is to work for total abolition of war. Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new." - Thomas Merton

"For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing." - Thomas Merton

"I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within." - Thomas Merton

"I thought to myself, who is this excellent man Van Doren who being employed to teach literature, teaches just that: talks about writing and about books and poems and plays: does not get off on a tangent about the biographies of the poets or novelists: does not read into their poems a lot of subjective messages which were never there? Who is this man who does not have to fake and cover up a big gulf of ignorance by teaching a lot of opinions and conjectures and useless facts that belong to some other subject? Who is this who really loves what he has to teach, and does not secretly detest all literature, and abhor poetry, while pretending to be a professor of it?...It was because of this virtual scholasticism of Mark's that he would never permit himself to fall into the naive errors of those who try to read some favorite private doctrine into every poet they like of ever nation or every age. And Mark abhorred the smug assurance with which second-rate left-wing critics find adumbrations of dialectical materialism in everyone who ever wrote from Homer and Shakespeare to whomever they happen to like in recent times. If the poet is to their fancy, then he is clearly seen to be preaching the class struggle. If they do not like him, then they are able to show that he was really a forefather of fascism. And all their literary heroes are revolutionary leaders, and all their favorite villains are capitalists and Nazis." - Thomas Merton

"In a spiritual crisis of the individual, the truth and authenticity of the person’s spiritual identity are called into question. He is placed in confrontation with reality and judged by his ability to bring himself into a valid and living relationship with the demands of his new situation. In the spiritual, social, historic crises of civilizations – and of religious institutions – the same principle applies. Growth, survival and even salvation may depend on the ability to sacrifice what is fictitious and unauthentic in the construction of one’s moral, religious or national identity. One must then enter upon a different creative task of reconstruction and renewal. This task can be carried out only in the climate of faith, of hope and of love: these three must be present in some form, even if they amount only to a natural belief in the validity and significance of human choice, a decision to invest human life with some shadow of meaning, a willingness to treat other men as other selves." - Thomas Merton

"In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being... All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God." - Thomas Merton

"Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess." - Thomas Merton

"Sunrise: hidden by pines and cedars to the east, I saw the red flame of the kingly sun glaring through the black trees, not like dawn but like a forest fire. Then the sun became distinguished as a person, and he shone silently and with solemn power through the branches, and the whole world was silent and calm." - Thomas Merton

"Those who refuse His mercy satisfy His justice in another way. Without His mercy, they cannot love Him. Without love for Him they cannot be 'justified' or 'made just'. That is to say: they cannot conform to Him Who is love. Those who have not received His mercy are in a state of injustice with regard to Him. It is their own injustice that is condemned by His justice. And in what does their injustice consist? In the refusal of His mercy." - Thomas Merton

"We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture." - Thomas Merton

"Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire." - Thomas Merton

"To accept what you are is to be content, and contentment is the greatest wealth." - Vimalia McClure

"Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." - William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley

"Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released From the most squalid cellerage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable-- The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light-- Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change, Wherever his evil mandate run and range, Into a dire intensity of life, A craftsman at his bench, he settles down To the grim job of throttling London Town. So, by a jealous lightlessness beset That might have oppressed the dragons of old time Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted City. prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labryrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting, Rent in the stuff of a material dark, Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; Working through wicked airs and deadly dews That make the laden robber grin askance At the good places in his black romance, And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose Go pinched and pined to bed Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey. Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, The old Father-River flows, His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot In the squalor of the universal shore: His voices sounding through the gruesome air As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: The while his children, the brave ships, No more adventurous and fair, Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, But infamously enchanted, Huddle together in the foul eclipse, Or feel their course by inches desperately, As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, From sinister reach to reach out -- out -- to sea. And Death the while -- Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, Death in his threadbare working trim-- Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, And with expert, inevitable hand Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: Thus signifying unto old and young, However hard of mouth or wild of whim, 'Tis time -- 'tis time by his ancient watch -- to part From books and women and talk and drink and art. And you go humbly after him To a mean suburban lodging: on the way To what or where Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: And you -- how should you care So long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down To the black job of burking London Town?" - William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley

"To a Desolate Friend - O friend, like some cold wind to-day Your message came, and chilled the light; Your house so dark, and mine so bright,— I could not weep, I could not pray! My wife and I had kissed at morn, My children’s lips were full of song; O friend, it seemed such cruel wrong, My life so full, and yours forlorn! We slept last night clasped hand in hand, Secure and calm—and never knew How fared the lonely hours with you, What time those dying lips you fanned. We dreamed of love, and did not see The shadow pass across our dream; We heard the murmur of a stream, Not death’s for it ran bright and free. And in the dark her gentle soul Passed out, but oh! we knew it not! My babe slept fast within her cot, While yours woke to the slow bell’s toll. She paused a moment,—who can tell?— Before our windows, but we lay So deep in sleep she went away, And only smiled a sad farewell! It would be like her; well we know How oft she waked while others slept— She never woke us when she wept, It would be like her thus to go! Ah, friend! you let her stray too far Within the shadow-haunted wood, Where deep thoughts never understood Breathe on us and like anguish are. One day within that gloom there shone A heavenly dawn, and with wide eyes She saw God’s city crown the skies, Since when she hasted to be gone. Too much you yielded to her grace; Renouncing self, she thus became An angel with a human name, And angels coveted her face. Earth’s door you set so wide, alack She saw God’s gardens, and she went A moment forth to look; she meant No wrong, but oh! she came not back! Dear friend, what can I say or sing, But this, that she is happy there? We will not grudge those gardens fair Where her light feet are wandering. The child at play is ignorant Of tedious hours; the years for you To her are moments: and you too Will join her ere she feels your want. The path she wends we cannot track: And yet some instinct makes us know Hers is the joy, and ours the woe,— We dare not wish her to come back!" - W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson

"Consecrate one whole day, and cease to listen to the groans of humanity and the discord of the world, and listen instead to that vast song that is welling up from the depths of the hearts of the redeemed; and blend the voice of thy thought with the immortal strains of Life's unending song. And then, when thou turnest again to humanity, to tell them of the true thoughts that overfill thy consciousness, they shall be indeed such thoughts as "a world's famine feed." - Waldo Pondray Warren

"Many of us spend our whole lives pursuing illusive things such as wealth, power, and status. These things are not bad, but if we make them the focal point of our existence, we will end up missing the greatest joys of life. When we base our sense of value and worth on our performance and the opinions of others, we live on a perpetual roller coaster. If our performance is good and people affirm us, we feel great. But, if we are struggling to meet our goals and others begin to look down on us . . . you know what happens. We begin to feel bad about who we are." - Wally Armstrong and Ken Blanchard

"Love's Secret - Never seek to tell thy love, Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears. Ah! she did depart! Soon after she was gone from me, A traveler came by, Silently, invisibly: He took her with a sigh." - William Blake

"Reeds of Innocence - Piing down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: 'Pipe a song about a Lamb!' So I piped with merry cheer. 'Piper, pipe that song again;' So I piped: he wept to hear. 'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer!' So I sung the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. 'Piper, sit thee down and write In a book that all may read.' So he vanish'd from my sight; And I pluck'd a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. " - William Blake

"Song - My silks and fine array, My smiles and languish'd air, By Love are driven away; And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have. His face is fair as heaven When springing buds unfold: O why to him was 't given, Whose heart is wintry cold? His breast is Love's all-worshipp'd tomb, Where all Love's pilgrims come. Bring me an axe and spade, Bring me a winding-sheet; When I my grave have made, Let winds and tempests beat: Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay: True love doth pass away! " - William Blake

"Ah, sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun; Seeking after that sweet golden clime, Where the traveller’s journey is done; Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow, Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my sun-flower wishes to go." - William Blake

"Auguries of Innocence - To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons Shudders hell thro’ all its regions. A dog starv’d at his master’s gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing. The game-cock clipt and arm’d for fight Does the rising sun affright. Every wolf’s and lion’s howl Raises from hell a human soul. The wild deer, wand’ring here and there, Keeps the human soul from care. The lamb misus’d breeds public strife, And yet forgives the butcher’s knife. The bat that flits at close of eve Has left the brain that won’t believe. The owl that calls upon the night Speaks the unbeliever’s fright. He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be belov’d by men. He who the ox to wrath has mov’d Shall never be by woman lov’d. The wanton boy that kills the fly Shall feel the spider’s enmity. He who torments the chafer’s sprite Weaves a bower in endless night. The caterpillar on the leaf Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief. Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the last judgment draweth nigh. He who shall train the horse to war Shall never pass the polar bar. The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat, Feed them and thou wilt grow fat. The gnat that sings his summer’s song Poison gets from slander’s tongue. The poison of the snake and newt Is the sweat of envy’s foot. The poison of the honey bee Is the artist’s jealousy. The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags Are toadstools on the miser’s bags. A truth that’s told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent. It is right it should be so; Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know, Thro’ the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. The babe is more than swaddling bands; Throughout all these human lands Tools were made, and born were hands, Every farmer understands. Every tear from every eye Becomes a babe in eternity; This is caught by females bright, And return’d to its own delight. The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar, Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore. The babe that weeps the rod beneath Writes revenge in realms of death. The beggar’s rags, fluttering in air, Does to rags the heavens tear. The soldier, arm’d with sword and gun, Palsied strikes the summer’s sun. The poor man’s farthing is worth more Than all the gold on Afric’s shore. One mite wrung from the lab’rer’s hands Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands; Or, if protected from on high, Does that whole nation sell and buy. He who mocks the infant’s faith Shall be mock’d in age and death. He who shall teach the child to doubt The rotting grave shall ne’er get out. He who respects the infant’s faith Triumphs over hell and death. The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons Are the fruits of the two seasons. The questioner, who sits so sly, Shall never know how to reply. He who replies to words of doubt Doth put the light of knowledge out. The strongest poison ever known Came from Caesar’s laurel crown. Nought can deform the human race Like to the armour’s iron brace. When gold and gems adorn the plow, To peaceful arts shall envy bow. A riddle, or the cricket’s cry, Is to doubt a fit reply. The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile Make lame philosophy to smile. He who doubts from what he sees Will ne’er believe, do what you please. If the sun and moon should doubt, They’d immediately go out. To be in a passion you good may do, But no good if a passion is in you. The whore and gambler, by the state Licensed, build that nation’s fate. The harlot’s cry from street to street Shall weave old England’s winding-sheet. The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse, Dance before dead England’s hearse. Every night and every morn Some to misery are born, Every morn and every night Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night. We are led to believe a lie When we see not thro’ the eye, Which was born in a night to perish in a night, When the soul slept in beams of light. God appears, and God is light, To those poor souls who dwell in night; But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day." - William Blake

"When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still. ‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies.’ ‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all cover’d with sheep.’ ‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, And then go home to bed.’ The little ones leapèd and shoutèd and laugh’d And all the hills echoèd." - William Blake

"Mad Song - The wild winds weep, And the night is a-cold; Come hither, Sleep, And my griefs unfold: But lo! the morning peeps 5 Over the eastern steeps, And the rustling beds of dawn The earth do scorn. Lo! to the vault Of pavèd heaven, With sorrow fraught My notes are driven: They strike the ear of night, Make weep the eyes of day; They make mad the roaring winds, And with tempests play. Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east From whence comforts have increas’d; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain." - William Blake

"The Couch of Death - The veiled evening walked solitary down the western hills, and Silence reposed in the valley; the birds of day were heard in their nests, rustling in brakes and thickets; and the owl and bat flew round the darkening trees: all is silent when Nature takes her repose.—In former times, on such an evening, when the cold clay breathed with life, and our ancestors, who now sleep in their graves, walked on the steadfast globe, the remains of a family of the tribes of Earth, a mother and a sister, were gathered to the sick bed of a youth. Sorrow linked them together; leaning on one another’s necks alternately—like lilies dropping tears in each other’s bosom—they stood by the bed like reeds bending over a lake, when the evening drops trickle down. His voice was low as the whisperings of the woods when the wind is asleep, and the visions of Heaven unfold their visitation. ‘Parting is hard and death is terrible; I seem to walk through a deep valley, far from the light of day, alone and comfortless! The damps of death fall thick upon me! Horrors stare me in the face! I look behind, there is no returning; Death follows after me; I walk in regions of Death, where no tree is, without a lantern to direct my steps, without a staff to support me.’ Thus he laments through the still evening, till the curtains of darkness were drawn. Like the sound of a broken pipe, the aged woman raised her voice. ‘O my son, my son, I know but little of the path thou goest! But lo! there is a God, who made the world; stretch out thy hand to Him.’ The youth replied, like a voice heard from a sepulchre, ‘My hand is feeble, how should I stretch it out? My ways are sinful, how should I raise mine eyes? My voice hath used deceit, how should I call on Him who is Truth? My breath is loathsome, how should He not be offended? If I lay my face in the dust, the grave opens its mouth for me; if I lift up my head, sin covers me as a cloak. O my dear friends, pray ye for me! Stretch forth your hands that my Helper may come! Through the void space I walk, between the sinful world and eternity! Beneath me burns eternal fire! O for a hand to pluck me forth!’ As the voice of an omen heard in the silent valley, when the few inhabitants cling trembling together; as the voice of the Angel of Death, when the thin beams of the moon give a faint light, such was this young man’s voice to his friends. Like the bubbling waters of the brook in the dead of night, the aged woman raised her cry, and said, ‘O Voice, that dwellest in my breast, can I not cry, and lift my eyes to Heaven? Thinking of this, my spirit is turned within me into confusion! O my child, my child, is thy breath infected? so is mine. As the deer wounded, by the brooks of water, so the arrows of sin stick in my flesh; the poison hath entered into my marrow.’ Like rolling waves upon a desert shore, sighs succeeded sighs; they covered their faces and wept. The youth lay silent, his mother’s arm was under his head; he was like a cloud tossed by the winds, till the sun shine, and the drops of rain glisten, the yellow harvest breathes, and the thankful eyes of the villagers are turned up in smiles. The traveller, that hath taken shelter under an oak, eyes the distant country with joy. Such smiles were seen upon the face of the youth: a visionary hand wiped away his tears, and a ray of light beamed around his head. All was still. The moon hung not out her lamp, and the stars faintly glimmered in the summer sky; the breath of night slept among the leaves of the forest; the bosom of the lofty hill drank in the silent dew, while on his majestic brow the voice of Angels is heard, and stringed sounds ride upon the wings of night. The sorrowful pair lift up their heads, hovering Angels are around them, voices of comfort are heard over the Couch of Death, and the youth breathes out his soul with joy into eternity." - William Blake

"Songs of Innocence (Introduction) - Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped; he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer:’ So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. ‘Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read.’ So he vanish’d from my sight, And I pluck’d a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear." - William Blake

"Never seek to tell thy love, Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, Ah! she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me, A traveller came by, Silently, invisibly: He took her with a sigh." - William Blake

"To be or not to be Of great capacity, Like Sir Isaac Newton, Or Locke, or Doctor South, Or Sherlock upon Death— I’d rather be Sutton! 2 For he did build a house For agèd men and youth, With walls of brick and stone; He furnish’d it within With whatever he could win, And all his own. He drew out of the Stocks His money in a box, And sent his servant To Green the Bricklayer, And to the Carpenter; He was so fervent. The chimneys were threescore, The windows many more; And, for convenience, He sinks and gutters made, And all the way he pav’d To hinder pestilence. Was not this a good man— Whose life was but a span, Whose name was Sutton— As Locke, or Doctor South, Or Sherlock upon Death, Or Sir Isaac Newton?" - William Blake

"A Poison Tree - I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I water’d it in fears, Night and morning with my tears; And I sunnèd it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright; And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine, And into my garden stole When the night had veil’d the pole: In the morning glad I see My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree. " - William Blake

"His whole life is an epigram smart, smooth and neatly penn’d, Plaited quite neat to catch applause, with a hang-noose at the end. " - William Blake

"Since all the riches of this world May be gifts from the Devil and earthly kings, I should suspect that I worshipp’d the Devil If I thank’d my God for worldly things." - William Blake

"They said this mystery never shall cease: The priest promotes war, and the soldier peace. " - William Blake

"Sure you have made me passing glad That you your mind so soon removed, Before that I the leisure had To choose you for my best beloved. " - William Byrd

"Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade, Apt emblem of a virtuous maid Silent and chaste she steals along, Far from the world's gay busy throng: With gentle yet prevailing force, Intent upon her destined course; Graceful and useful all she does, Blessing and blest where'er she goes; Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass, And Heaven reflected in her face. " - William Cowper