"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
“But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.”
"A Tribe to Eban C. Ingersoll" (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38812/38812-h/38812-h.htm
Context: Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud — and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.
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Robert G. Ingersoll 439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899Related quotes
The Angelic Angleworm (p. 70)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)
“Liberty lends us her wings and Hope guides us by her star.”
Source: Villette (1853), Ch. VI: London
“My tavern was the Big Bear.
My stars in the sky rustled softly.”
Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.
Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 2
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/feb/23/supply-ministerial-explanations to the House of Commons (23 February 1855) opposing the Crimean War.
1850s
Context: The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.