Top 25 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Chenevix Trench

As shadows attend substances, so words follow upon things.

There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it.

Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed,Not all who fail have therefor worked in vain.There is no failure for the good and brave.

"The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good;" and without claiming for an instant that title of good for my book, I do not doubt that many a good book has remained unwritten, or, perhaps, being written, has remained unpublished, because there floated before the mind's eye of the author, or possible author, the ideal of a better or a best, which has put him out of all conceit with his good.

Prayer is not getting man's will done in heaven, but getting God's will done on earth. It is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of God's willingness.

None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.

Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth; Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth.

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved.

Best friends might loathe us, if what things perverse we know of our own selves they also knew.

Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.

All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake, Because in us keen longings they awake.

The present is only intelligible in the light of the past.

We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others — that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?

The love of our own language, what is it, in fact, but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction?

If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, connected prayer, As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are; If, never leaving Thee, we have no need Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into Thy presence, but continued there Like angels standing on the highest stair Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed!

We speak of persons as jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. A gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as being born under the planet Saturn, who was considered to make those who owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself.

Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name.

We live not in our moments or our years: The present we fling from us like the rind Of some sweet future, which we after find Bitter to taste.

For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love.

Language is the close-fitting dress of thought.

The sin of pride is the sin of sins; in which all subsequent sins are included, as in their germ; they are but the unfolding of this one.

Oh seize the instant time; you never will With water once passed by impel the mill.

Sin may be clasped so close, we cannot see its face.

Speak but little and well, if you would be esteemed as a man of merit.