Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by William C. Bryant

Alas! to seize the moment When the heart inclines to heart, And press a suit with passion, Is not a woman's part. If man come not to gather The roses where they stand, They fade among their foliage, They cannot seek his hand.

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.

Pleasantly, between the pelting showers, the sunshine gushes down.

All great poets have been men of great knowledge.

Follow thou thy choice.

Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.

The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

Tender pauses speak The overflow of gladness, When words are all too weak.

Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.

Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.

The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.

Much has seen said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.

The country ever has a lagging Spring, Waiting for May to call its violets forth, And June its roses-showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back. Within the city's bounds the time of flowers Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day, Such as full often, for a few bright hours, Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May, Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom- And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom.

Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues That live among the clouds, and flush the air, Lingering, and deepening at the hour of dews.

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold The pur0ple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.

The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other.

I shall seeThe hour of death draw near to me,Hope, blossoming within my heart. . . .

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 to-night.

Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?

Still sweet with blossoms is the year's fresh prime.

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.

Truth crushed to the earth will rise again!

I grieve for life's bright promise, just shown and then withdrawn.

Difficulty is the nurse of greatness.

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.

Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke.

The press, important as is its office, is but the servant of the human intellect, and its ministry is for good or for evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill which grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain, and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Ere, in the northern gale, The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, Have put their glory on.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.

Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners.

Gently - so have good men taught - Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide Into the new; the eternal flow of things, Like a bright river of the fields of heaven, Shall journey onward in perpetual peace.

All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.

Adversity is the nurse of greatness which roughly rocks her patients back to health.

Maidens hearts are always soft: Would that men's were truer!

Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd and under roofs That our frail hands have raised?

The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray, On the lake below thy gentle eyes; The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray, And dark and silent the water lies; And out of that frozen mist the snow In wavering flakes begins to flow; Flake after flake, They sink in the dark and silent lake.

But 'neath yon crimson tree Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.

The summer day is closed - the sun is set: Well they have done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes softly out In the red west. The green blade of the ground Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun; Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil, From bursting cells, and in their graves await Their resurrection. Insects from the pools Have filled the air awhile with humming wings, That now are still for ever; painted moths Have wandered the blue sky, and died again

Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines! In the soft light of these serenest skies; From the broad highland region, black with pines, Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise, Bathed in the tint Peruvian slaves behold In rosy flushes on the virgin gold.

Genius, with all its pride in its own strength, is but a dependent quality, and cannot put forth its whole powers nor claim all its honors without an amount of aid from the talents and labors of others which it is difficult to calculate.

The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine the animadvert upon all political institutions is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall into despotism and anarchy.

Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.

Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson.

Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot Fail not with weariness, for on their tops The beauty and the majesty of earth, Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget The steep and toilsome way.

Or, bide thou where the poppy blows With windflowers fail and fair.

The hushed winds their Sabbath keep.

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by. As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.

And kind the voice and glad the eyes That welcome my return at night.

The journalist should be on his guard against publishing what is false in taste or exceptionable in morals.

Is not thy home among the flowers?

On my cornice linger the ripe black grapes ungathered; Children fill the groves with the echoes of their glee, Gathering tawny chestnuts, and shouting when beside them Drops the heavy fruit of the tall black-walnut tree.

There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night; And grief may hide an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light.

Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.

When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.

The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the first from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen.

It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician.