James Beattie Quotes (18 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

James Beattie: 18 quotes0 likes

Famous James Beattie Quotes

“To the pure soul by Fancy's fire refined,
Ah, what is mirth but turbulence unholy,
When with the charm compared of heavenly melancholy.”

James Beattie

Book i. Stanza 55.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

“At the close of the day when the hamlet is still,
And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,
When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill,
And naught but the nightingale’s song in the grove.”

James Beattie

The Hermit

“Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?”

James Beattie

Book i. Stanza 1.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

“Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned;
Ambition's groveling crew forever left behind.”

James Beattie

Book i. Stanza 7.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

“Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.”

James Beattie

Book i. Stanza 11.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

“Old age comes on apace to ravage all the clime.”

James Beattie

Book i. Stanza 25.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

James Beattie Quotes about the night

“Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn, but you woodlands I mourn not for you!
For spring is returning your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance and glittering with dew.
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn,
Kind nature the embryo blossom shall save;
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?”

James Beattie

The Hermit

“Ah! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave!”

James Beattie

The Hermit

“But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?
Oh when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?”

James Beattie

The Hermit

James Beattie Quotes

“Every man of learning wishes, that his son may be learned; and that not so much from a view to pecuniary advantage, as from a desire to have him supplied with the means of useful instruction and liberal amusement.”

James Beattie

"Remarks on the Utility of Classical Learning" (written in 1769), published in Essays, Vol. II (1776), p. 524.

“What is a law, if those who make it
Become the forwardest to break it?”

James Beattie

The Wolf and Shepherds (1776).

“He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.”

James Beattie

The Hermit

“Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages:
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder.”

James Beattie

The Wolf and Shepherds (1776).

“By the glare of false science betray’d,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.”

James Beattie

The Hermit

“And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb.”

James Beattie

The Hermit

“When squint-eyed Slander plies the unhallow'd tongue,
From poison'd maw when Treason weaves his line,
And Muse apostate (infamy to song!)
Grovels, low muttering, at Sedition's shrine.”

James Beattie

The Judgment of Paris (1765), stanza 109.

“Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn,
Yet horror screams from his discordant throat.
Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn,
While warbling larks on russet pinions float;
Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote,
Where the gray linnets carol from the hill:
O let them ne'er, with artificial note,
To please a tyrant, strain the little bill,
But sing what heaven inspires, and wander where they will.”

James Beattie

Book i. Stanza 5.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

“Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down,
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrewn,
Fast by a brook or fountain’s murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!”

James Beattie

Book ii. Stanza 17.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)

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