“To happy folk
All heaviest words no more of meaning bear
Than far-off bells saddening the Summer air.”
"The Hill of Venus".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)
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William Morris 119
author, designer, and craftsman 1834–1896Related quotes
“The heaviest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.”
This remark referring to Charles de Gaulle was actually made by General Edward Louis Spears, Churchill's personal representative to the Free French.
Film producer Alexander Korda asked Churchill in 1948 if he had made the remark, he replied
No, I didn't say it; but I'm sorry I didn't, because it was quite witty … and so true!
Quoted in Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century p. 105.
Misattributed
“All beautiful words are susceptible to more than one meaning (or signification).”
“[…] black folks kill more black folks than the KKK ever did.”
At an address on February, 2013 at the Community College of Philadelphia, City Journal, Spring 2013, vol. 23, no. 2 http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_2_michael-nutter.html
"The Art of Living", interview with journalist Gordon Young first published in 1960
Variant: [T]here are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
Source: The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket
“A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer’s day.”
In Praise of Lessius’s Rule of Health, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).