A Quote by Alexander Pope

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Alexander Pope

Quote Topics

Ajax Along Blows Corn Flies Flows Gently Like Line Loud Main Move Numbers Plain Roar Rock Rough Shore Should Slow Smooth Soft Some Strain Stream Swift Throw Too Torrent Vast Verse Weight Words Zephyr

Quote Author

Alexander Pope
English - Poet
May 21, 1688 - May 30, 1744

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows.

Alexander Pope

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly rising o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm.

Thomas Gray

When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.

Ann Voskamp

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

Anna Letitia Barbauld

'Who dares this pair of boots displace, Must meet Bombastes face to face.' Thus do I challenge the human race. Bombastes: So have I heard on Afric's burning shore, A hungry lion give a grievous roar; The grievous roar echo'd along the shore. King: So have I heard on Afric's burning shore Another lion give a grievous roar, And the first lion thought the last a bore.

William Barnes Rhodes

So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.

Oliver Goldsmith

If you want to please the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow.

Arturo Toscanini

The law changes and flows like water, and the stream of women's rights law has become a sudden rushing torrent.

Shana Alexander

The law changes and flows like water, and . . . the stream of women's rights law has become a sudden rushing torrent.

Shana Alexander

Rough wind, the moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, Wail, for the world's wrong!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present. They have been accustomed to move and to meet in all manner of ways. For this reason, it came to pass that being spread abroad through a vast time and trying every sort of combination and motion, at length those come together that produce great things, like earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures.

Lucretius

The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

Matthew Arnold

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.

Helen Keller

Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

John Milton

As children we listened to the sound of the sea still echoing in the shell we picked up by the shore. That ancestral roar links us to the great sea which surges within us as well.