Quotes by William Bryant

• Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.
• The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep tonight.
• The little windflower, whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.
• The groves were God's first temples.
• There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by a loving eye; There is no fragrance in April breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by.
• Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.
• Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.
• Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign.
• Loveliest of lovely things are they on earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
• Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.
• The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.
• Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
• To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.
• Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.
• Where hast thou wandered. gentle gale, to find the perfumes thou dost bring?
• Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster - children into strength and athletic proportion.
• A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.
• A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.
• All that tread, the globe are but a handful to the tribes, that slumber in its bosom.
• And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.
• Eloquence is the poetry of prose.
• Weep not that the world changes - did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.
• Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.
• The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
• Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for: it is a thing to be achieved.