“Though every great prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”
Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman
"Missionary Hymn", st. 2 (1819).
Hymns
“What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”
Missionary Hymn ("Java" in one version); reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 487.
Hymns
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Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile." by Reginald Heber?
Reginald Heber21
English clergyman 1783–1826Related quotes
Démosthenés (-384–-322 BC) ancient greek statesman and orator
Third Olynthiac http://books.google.com/books?id=n4INAAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;the+easiest+thing+in+the+world+is+self-deceit+for+every+man+believes+what+he+wishes+though+the+reality+is+often+different&quot;&pg=PA57#v=onepage, section 19 (349 BC), as translated by Charles Rann Kennedy (1852) <br class="br">Variants: <br class="br">A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true. <br class="br">As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 255 <br class="br">There is nothing easier than self-delusion. Since what man desires, is the first thing he believes.
“…Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d,
At best is only a monkey shav’d!”
W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo
Princess Ida (1884)
“We bear it calmly, though a ponderous woe,
And still adore the hand that gives the blow.”
John Pomfret (1667–1702) English poet
Verses to his Friend under Affliction. Compare: " Bless the hand that gave the blow", John Dryden, The Spanish Friar (1681), Act ii. Sc. 1.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi
"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Faith is not a thing that comes into being out of nothing. It originates in an event. In the spiritual vacancy of life something may suddenly occur that is like the lifting of a veil at the horizon of knowledge. A simple episode may open sight of the eternal. A shift of conceptions, boisterous like a tempest of soft as a breeze may swerve a mind for an instant or forever. For God is not wholly silent and man is not always deaf. God's willingness to call men to His service and man's responsiveness to the divine indications in things and events are for faith what sun and soil are for the plant.
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
Opera and Humour (1991)
Context: The mind of man, though perhaps the most splendid achievement of evolution, is not, surely, that answer to every problem of the universe. Hamlet suffers, but the Gravediggers go right on with their silly quibbles.
