Quotes about bower (35 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

Thomas Paine book Common Sense

Source: Common Sense

“The moon like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.”

William Blake Night

Night, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Smile , Flowers , Night

“The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions…. Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today…. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-102 (26 June 2003).

Search , Freedom , Personality

“Across the downs a hummingbird
Came dipping through the bowers,
He pivoted on emptiness
To scrutinize the flowers.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"The First Reformer"
Lava Lane and Other Poems (1925)

Flowers

“Deserted now the Imperial bowers
Save by some few poor lonely flowers…
One white-haired dame,
An emperor's flame,
Sits down and tells of bygone hours.”

Yuan Zhen

"At an Old Palace" (《行宫》), in Gems of Chinese Literature, trans. Herbert A. Giles
Variant translations:
Deserted now imperial bowers.
For whom still redden palace flowers?
Some white-haired chambermaids at leisure
Talk of the late emperor's pleasure.
"At an Old Palace", in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 128
The ancient Palace lies in desolation spread.
The very garden flowers in solitude grow red.
Only some withered dames with whitened hair remain,
Who sit there idly talking of mystic monarchs dead.
"The Ancient Palace", as translated by W. J. B. Fletcher in Lotus and Chrysanthemum: An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese Poetry (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1934), p. 107

Flowers

“Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands,
Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands,
Silent above the flowers, her children lost,
Slain by the arrows of the early Frost.”

Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903) American poet

Ode.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Children , Flowers , Summer

“She padded toward Han, barefoot, like a faerie startled out of a forest bower, bewitching mix of clan and flatland beauty.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

Beauty

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)

Health , Beauty , Dreams , Sleep

“Not forever does the bulbul sing
In balmy shades of bowers,
Not forever lasts the spring
Nor ever blossom the flowers.
Not forever reigneth joy,
Sets the sun on days of bliss,
Friendships not forever last,
They know not life, who know not this.”

Khushwant Singh Train to Pakistan

Source: Train to Pakistan

Life , Friendship , Spring , Flowers

“I'd be a butterfly born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet.”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

I'd be a Butterfly, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“When Nature gives a gorgeous rose,
Or yields the simplest fern,
She writes this motto on the leaves, —
"To whom it may concern!"
And so it is the poet comes
And revels in her bowers,
And, — though another hold the land,
Is owner of the flowers.”

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) American poet

"The Poet's License".
The Masquerade and Other Poems (1866)

Flowers , Nature

“Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows;
Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd bower.
Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn,
She would be gather'd, though she grew on thorn.”

Robert Greene (dramatist) book Pandosto

Pandosto; Dyce p. 294.

Beauty

“Awake, ye West Winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy freshness breathes the gale,
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake,
And Evening comes with locks bodropp'd with dew;
On Desmond's mouldering turrets slowly shake
The trembling rye-grass and the harehell blue,
And ever and anon fair Mulla's plaints renew.”

William Julius Mickle Sir Martyn

Sir Martyn (1777), Canto I, stanza 1

Grass

“A Spring o'erhung with many a flow'r,
The grey sand dancing in its bed,
Embank'd beneath a Hawthorn bower,
Sent forth its waters near my head:
A rosy Lass approach'd my view;
I caught her blue eye's modest beam:
The stranger nodded 'How d'ye do!”

Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823) British writer

And leap'd across the infant stream.
Rosy Hannah, stanza 1, from Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs (1802)

Spring , Water , Dance

“Oh, weep for the hour
When to Eveleen's bower
The lord of the valley with false vows came.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Eveleen's Bower.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Falseness

“One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system. Many argue that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct. If that view is accepted, the Bowers decision in effect says the State of Georgia has the right to make a wrong decision — wrong in the sense that it violates some people's views of rights in a just society. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgia's right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a necessary component of its own political processes. Its citizens have the political liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense, subject to correction in the ordinary political process.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

[Unenumerated Rights and the Dictates of Judicial Restraint, Address to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, Stanford University. Palo Alto, California., http://web.archive.org/web/20080627022153/http://www.andrewhyman.com/1986kennedyspeech.pdf, 24 July 1986 to 1 August 1986, 13] (Also quoted at p. 443 of Kennedy's 1987 confirmation transcript http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh100-1037/browse.html).

People , Decision , Sense

“But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musaeus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as warbled to the string,
Drew Iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 105

Love , Sadness , Soul , Hell

“And there the lovely Lily grew,
The summer's purest flower,
And many a tiny fairy knew
The shelter of its bower”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(7th June 1834) The History of the Lily
(25th October 1834) The Exile. See under Translations from the French
(1835) For Versions from the German, see under Translations from the German
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835

Love , Flowers , Summer

“Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit or more welcome shade.”

Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) English poet and man of letters

On the Death of Mr. Addison (1721), line 45.

“Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Dreams , Hope , Disappointment , Knowledge

“Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can blast the flower,
Even when in most unwary hour
It blooms in Fancy’s bower.
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can rend the shrine
In which its vermeil splendours shine.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Untitled (1810); titled "Love's Rose" by William Michael Rossetti in Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1870)

Love , Age , Flowers

“I'm sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the T. V.
Tower.
I want roses in
my garden bower; dig?”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

“She fell as falls the rose in spring,
The fairest are ever most perishing,
Yet lingers that tale of sorrow and love,
Of the Christian maid and her Moslem love;
A tale to be told in the twilight hour,
For the beauty's tears in her lonely bower.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Wreath
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love , Beauty , Spring , Tear

“His grace,
Sit nature, fortune, motion, time and place. ]] From whence with grace and goodness compassed round,
He ruleth, blesseth, keepeth all he wrought,
Above the air, the fire, the sea and ground,
Our sense, our wit, our reason and our thought,
Where persons three, with power and glory crowned,
Are all one God, who made all things of naught,
Under whose feet, subjected to his grace,
Sit nature, fortune, motion, time and place.This is the place, from whence like smoke and dust
Of this frail world the wealth, the pomp and power,
He tosseth, tumbleth, turneth as he lust,
And guides our life, our death, our end and hour:
No eye, however virtuous, pure and just,
Can view the brightness of that glorious bower,
On every side the blessed spirits be,
Equal in joys, though differing in degree.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Sedea colà, dond'egli e buono e giusto
Dà legge al tutto, e 'l tutto orna e produce
Sovra i bassi confin del mondo angusto,
Ove senso o ragion non si conduce.
E della eternità nel trono augusto
Risplendea con tre lumi in una luce.
Ha sotto i piedi il Fato e la Natura,
Ministri umíli, e 'l moto, e chi 'l misura; <p> E 'l loco, e quella che qual fumo o polve
La gloria di qua giuso e l'oro e i regni,
piace là su, disperde e volve:
Nè, Diva, cura i nostri umani sdegni.
Quivi ei così nel suo splendor s'involve,
Che v'abbaglian la vista anco i più degni;
D'intorno ha innumerabili immortali
Disegualmente in lor letizia eguali.
Canto IX, stanzas 56–57 (tr. Edward Fairfax)
Max Wickert's translation:
He sat where He gives laws both good and just
to all, and all creates, and all sets right,
above the low bounds of this world of dust,
beyond the reach of sense or reason's might;
enthroned upon Eternity, august,
He shines with three lights in a single light.
At His feet Fate and Nature humbly sit,
and Motion, and the Power that measures it,<p>and Space, and Fate who like a powder will
all fame and gold and kingdoms here below,
as pleases Him on high, disperse or spill,
nor, goddess, cares she for our wrath or woe.
There He, enwrapped in His own splendour, still
blinds even worthiest vision with His glow.
All round Him throng immortals numberless,
unequally equal in their happiness.
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Life , Death , God , World

“There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Part II.
Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part I-III: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan

Dreams , Bird , Singing , Time

“I want to cry out to these young girls: Stop! Think!... For heaven's sake, don't fall down the rabbit hole of the lesbian scene. You will never escape, and your talent will wither on the vine. Your energy will be wasted and absorbed in repetition without progression. Women alone are Spenser's Bower of Bliss, enclosed, comfortable, and dangerous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 82

Women , Girl , Thinking , Cry

“Who he was
That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod
First covered, and here taught this aged Tree
With its dark arms to form a circling bower,
I well remember.—He was one who owned
No common soul. In youth by science nursed.
And led by nature into a wild scene
Of lofty hopes, he to the world went forth
A favoured Being, knowing no desire
Which genius did not hallow; 'gainst the taint
Of dissolute tongues, and jealousy, and hate,
And scorn,—against all enemies prepared,
All but neglect. The world, for so it thought,
Owed him no service; wherefore he at once
With indignation turned himself away,
And with the food of pride sustained his soul
In solitude.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Lines (1795)

Hate , Youth , Age , World

“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"Argument of His Book".
Hesperides (1648)

Flowers , Bird , Singing

“I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 6
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)

Love , World , Hope , Heart

“Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea.
The orange flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea.”

Walter Scott book Quentin Durward

Quentin Durward, Chap. iv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Guy , Flowers , Sun , Sea

“When seagull droppings landed on my head at a campaign event at Bowers Beach two days before Election Day, I chose to read it as a sign of a coming success.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 73
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Reading , Success

“One outcome of the Norman Conquest was the making of the English language. …the speech of Alfred and Bede, was exiled from hall and bower, from court and cloister, and was despised as a peasant's jargon… It ceased almost, though not quite, to be a written language. … Now when a language is seldom written and is not an object of interest to scholars, it quickly adapts itself in the mouths of plain people to the needs and uses of life. …it can be altered much more easily when there are no grammarians to protest. During the three centuries when our native language was a peasant's dialect, it lost its clumsy inflexions and elaborate genders, and acquired the grace, suppleness, and adaptability which are among its chief merits.”

George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876–1962) Historian

A Shortened History of England (1959)

Life , People

“They belittled this world and exaggerated the importance of the next. They consoled the slave by telling him that in a little while he would exchange his chains for wings. They comforted the captive by saying that in a few days he would leave his dungeon for the bowers of Paradise. His followers believed that he had said that “Whosoever believeth not shall be damned.” This passage was the cross upon which intellectual liberty was crucified.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Context: As a result of what he did not teach in connection with what he did teach, his followers saw no harm in slavery, no harm in polygamy. They belittled this world and exaggerated the importance of the next. They consoled the slave by telling him that in a little while he would exchange his chains for wings. They comforted the captive by saying that in a few days he would leave his dungeon for the bowers of Paradise. His followers believed that he had said that “Whosoever believeth not shall be damned.” This passage was the cross upon which intellectual liberty was crucified. If Christ had given us the laws of health; if he had told us how to cure disease by natural means; if he had set the captive free; if he had crowned the people with their rightful power; if he had placed the home above the church; if he had broken all the mental chains; if he had flooded all the caves and dens of fear with light, and filled the future with a common joy, he would in truth have been the Savior of this world.

World

“Softly, O midnight hours!
Move softly o'er the bowers
Where lies in happy sleep a girl so fair:
For ye have power, men say,
Our hearts in sleep to sway
And cage cold fancies in a moonlight snare.”

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902) Irish poet and critic

Song. Softly, O Midnight Hours; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 721.

Sleep , Girl , Happiness , Heart