Quotes about glory
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“It is said that the Shariat prospers under the shadow of the sword (al-Shara‘ tahat al-saif). And the glory of the holy Shariat depends on the kings of Islam…”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Maktubat-i-Imam Rabbani translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Sa’id Ahmad Naqshbandi, Deoband, 1988, Volume I, p.211. This letter was written to the Khan-i-Azam of that time.
From his letters

Dependency

“My attendants are Honour and Praise, Renown and Glory with joyful countenance, and Victory with snow-white wings like mine.”
Mecum Honor ac Laudes et laeto Gloria vultu et Decus ac niveis Victoria concolor alis.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book XV, lines 98–99; spoken by Virtue.
Punica

Victory

“The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.
We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Saturday Pioneer (20 December 1890)
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (1890 and 1891)

Love, War, Age, Education

“My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

"Some notes on my poetry" Collected Poems (1957)

Life

“I am a-goin' for to tell you here to-day; yes, I'm a-goin for to tell you all, that I'm a plebian! I glory in it; I am a plebian! The people — yes, the people of the United States have made me what I am; and I am a-goin' for to tell you here to-day — yes, to-day, in this place — that the people are everything.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

First address as Vice-President, widely reported as having been delivered while he was inebriated. (5 March 1865).
Quote

People

“No doubt analytical psychologists could tear it all to bits and explain it in the jargon of this or that psychological school. Critics could trample on my dreams and say that it was too much in the realm of feeling to have any value, but so is falling in love. Is that not real, and highly significant, and life-changing? So is the state of mind induced by music, or by some of the glories of Nature, or by some of the works of man... All I can say is that to me it was an experience of God, never to be denied... No one who has had such an experience can ever doubt but that in the end good will triumph over every form of evil, and that every life, however humble, frustrated, indifferent or even careless, is in the care of this Power and within a Plan, vast beyond our power to imagine, which will work out in a blessedness which brings utter satisfaction and quality of bliss for which there are no words.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

(76-77) [ellipsis added]
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Love, Life, God, School

“In contrast to the pride of those who deny their guilt to escape self-criticism is the humility of God, who made a world which added not to His glory and then made man to criticize Him.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 5, p. 85

God, World

“One of the loveliest daughters of that land,
Divinest Greece! that taught the painter's hand
To give eternity to loveliness;
One of those dark-eyed maids, to whom belong
The glory and the beauty of each Song
Thy poets breathed, for it was theirs to bless
With life the pencil and the lyre's dreams,
Giving reality to visioned gleams
Of bright divinities.”

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

Leander and Hero from The London Literary Gazette (22nd February 1823)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life, Beauty, Dreams, Reality

“Farewell,
Army of Tennessee! Rough glory, rooted here,
Feeds the lone vow, the lingering touch
Of a late comrade sworn to remember you!
Lights glow from river and town. The darkness stabs.
And winter sweeps the undefended earth.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

The Last Charge

Light, Winter

“But words are imperfect, and our system of writing, for all its great glories, has its limitations in terms of its ability to describe creation in all its manifest and hidden glories … So we would have to invent another way of describing things.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

Ch 11
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

Way

“When ye are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore ot glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, " If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoyment of this crown of glory."”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 265.

Wisdom, God, Water

“The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit.”

George Mikes (1912–1987) Hungarian-born British author

How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils (1946)

Way, Drink, Science, Tea

“I am always giving advice to young players about how things are, how important it is to work hard every day to reach the glory days.”

Milagros Cabral (1978) female volleyball player from the Dominican Republic

Milagros Cabral Estelar de la era dorada del voleibol http://www.hoy.com.do/deportes/2010/8/14/338019/Milagros-CabralEstelar-de-la-era-dorada-del-voleibol Interview in Hoy (14 August 2010)

“Oh, that we had our eyes more and more steadily fixt on the risen Savior! Oh, that we could ever be learning more and more from Him to breathe out blessing, as He did when He imparted His Spirit to the disciples! Oh, that we were more and more learning like Him to encourage the foolish and slow of heart to joyful faith in the divine promises, to active obedience to the divine will of their Lord and Master, to the glad enjoyment and use of all the heavenly treasures that He has thrown open to us! Oh, that we were ever speaking more effectively to all connected with us, of the kingdom of God and of our inheritance in it, so that they might see why it was necessary for Christ to suffer, but also into what glory He has gone! These are our desires, and they are not vain desires.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) German theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christ's Resurrection an Image of Our New Life The World's Great Sermons, Volume 3 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11713 by Grenville Kleiser

God, Faith, Suffering, Learning

“[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Great Divorce

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 9

Death, Pleasure, Dreams, Suffering

“No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”

William Penn book No Cross, No Crown

No Cross, No Crown (1682)

Pain

“Do you believe it! Do you believe that the King of glory is present, and has been since 1874?… Behold, the King reigns! you are his publicity agents. Therefore advertise, advertise, advertise, the King and his kingdom.”

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) American judge

The Kingdom (1925)

“And the wind will whip your tousled hair,
The sun, the rain, the sweet despair,
Great tales of love and strife.
And somewhere on your path to glory
You will write your story of a life.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Story of a Life
Song lyrics, Sequel (1981)

Love, Life, Sun, Despair

“Angels are those beings who have been on an earth like this, and have passed through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. They have kept their first estate far enough to preserve themselves in the Priesthood. They did not so violate the law of the Priesthood and condemn themselves to the sin against the Holy Ghost as to be finally lost. They are not crowned with the celestial ones. They are persons who have lived upon an earth, but did not magnify the Priesthood in that high degree that many others have done who have become Gods, even the sons of God. Human beings that pertain to this world, who do not magnify or are not capable of magnifying their high calling in the Priesthood and receive crowns of glory, immortality, and eternal lives, will also, when they again receive their bodies, become angels and will receive a glory. They are single, without families or kingdoms to reign over. All the difference between men and angels is, men are passing through the day of trial that angels have already passed through.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 9:102 (January 5, 1860)
1860s

Men, God, World, Family

“This was human glory—a sad and exhaust-darkened memorial for good citizens to ignore and drunks to piss upon on their way home from the brothels. Here was the omega-point of all ambition.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (p. 317)

Sadness, Way, Home, Memory

“…above all, I must recommend to you the Care of the Navy, the Strength and Glory of this Nation, that you will put it into such a Condition, as may make us considered and respected Abroad. I cannot express My Concern upon this Occasion more suitable to My own Thoughts of it, than by assuring you I have a true English Heart, as jealous of the Honour of the Nation as you can be. And I please Myself with the Hopes, that, by GOD'S Blessing and your Assistance, I may carry the Reputation of it yet higher in the World, than ever it has been in the Time of any of My Ancestors.”

James II of England (1633–1701) King of England, Scotland and Ireland

Speech to Parliament http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=12935 (30 May 1685).

God, World, Hope, Time

“Men of Harlech! On to glory,
See your banner, famed in story,
Waves these burning words before ye,
"Britain scorns to yield!"”

Thomas Oliphant

Song Men of Harlech

Men

“At the following morning, when the first citizens started walking around, he was found dead. So died the poor and brave Antônio da Silva Marramaque who, at the age of 18, dreamed with the glories of poetry and was now murdered due his great soul and brave moral! He didn't compose any sonnet and, if he did, he composed bad ones. But, by his way, he was a hero and a poet… that God bless him!”

Lima Barreto book Clara dos Anjos

Clara dos Anjos (1948)

God, Age, Dreams, Way

“Self-seeking, self-glory, that is not me. No. Many people say I embarrass them with my humility.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Interview in The New York Times, 25 December 2006

People

“Yet spirit immortal, the tomb can not bind thee,
But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle,
No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o’er the plain:
Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,
No sound can awake thee to glory again.”

Lyman Heath (1804–1870) American musician

The Grave of Bonaparte, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) (incorrectly attributed as "Leonard" Heath).

War, Sleep, Sun

“Salary, (I said, quite offended) what do I care for salary? I do not want the salary; I want the position. It is glory enough to go back to the Pittsburgh Division in your former place. You can make my salary just what you please and you need not give me any more than what I am getting now… Oh, please don't speak to me of money!”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Source: Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, 1920, Chapter VII

Money

“Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 4.

God, Way, Business, Nature

“I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child.”

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

The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)

World, Dreams, Time, Future

“My countrymen, though not in any partisan sense, I must speak of the services of the men and women who rallied to the colors of the Republic in the World War. America realizes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacrifices made, and the sufferings endured. There shall be no distinctions between those who knew the perils and glories of the battlefront or the dangers of the sea, and those who were compelled to serve behind the lines, or those who constituted the great reserve of a grand army which awaited the call in camps at home. All were brave. All were self-sacrificing. All were sharers of those ideals which sent our boys twice armed to war.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

Women, Men, War, World

“Oh ye! who all life's energies combine
The fadeless laurel round your brows to twine,
Pause but one moment in your brief career,
Nor seek for glory in a mortal sphere.”

Susanna Moodie (1803–1885) Canadian writer

From her poem Fame in Enthusiasm and Other Poems Smith, Elder and Co London 1831

Life

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Love, Men, Hostility, People

“I that in heill wes and gladness,
Am trublit now with gret seiknes,
And feblit with infermité;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals warld is bot transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;
Timor mortis conturbat me.”

William Dunbar (1460–1520) Poet and civil servant

"The Lament for the Makars", line 1.

“Failure is not a disgrace. It’s just a pitch that you missed, and you’d better get ready for the next one… My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don’t.”

Craig Ferguson book American on Purpose

American on Purpose (2009)

Failure

“Riches, glory, power are mere smoke, vanity! The rich man will find a richer than himself; the greater glory of another will eclipse a man who is famous; a strong man will be conquered by a stronger. But can Cæsar himself, can any god even, experience greater delight or be happier than a simple mortal at the moment when at his breast there is breathing another dear breast, or when he kisses beloved lips? Hence love makes us equal to the gods, O Lygia.”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Quo Vadis

Marcus Vinicius to Lygia, in Ch. 2
Quo Vadis (1895)

Love, God, Kiss, Strong

“When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon, glowing sun,
When we stand with Christ in glory,
Looking o'er life's f1nished story,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know —
Not till then — how much I owe.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 299.

Life, World, Sun, Christ

“It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. … Many have defended Britain against her foes. None can defend her against herself.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/mar/06/india-government-policy#column_678 in the House of Commons (6 March 1947) on Indian independence <br class="br">Post-war years (1945–1955)

“The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Beauty, Night

“Martial force is the basis of all political virtues; in the rich treasure of Germany's glories the Prussian military glory is a jewel as precious, as loyally acquired as the masterpieces of our poets and our thinkers; the sacred character of the allegiance to the flag is a witness to the moral force of our people. Therefore let our Liberalism return to those ancient German convictions.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Statement (1869), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 59.

People

“That's the nub of the thing, you see — seriousness of spirit. It doesn't mean heaviness of heart, or a lack of fantasy, but it does mean an awareness of influences that touch our lives, sometimes in ways that seem cruel and unfeeling, and sometimes in ways that open up a glory which can never be forgotten.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Scottish Folklore and Opera (1992).

Way, Heart

“Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
Leviathan (1651)

Laughter, Passion

“Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.”

William James Is Life Worth Living?

"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

“We study the glory of God, and the honour and liberty of parliament, for which we unanimously fight, without seeking our own interests… I profess I could never satisfy myself on the justness of this war, but from the authority of the parliament to maintain itself in its rights; and in this cause I hope to prove myself an honest man and single-hearted.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Statement to Colonel Valentine Walton (5 or 6 September 1644)

God, War, Hope, Study

“I was never able to understand how it was that here and there the welfare of the Fatherland had to be sacrificed to mere petty party interests, and from the point of view of political conviction felt myself most at home in the shade of that tree which was firmly rooted in the ethico-political soil of the epoch of our great and venerable Emperor. That epoch, with what I regarded as its wonderful glories, seemed to have become part of me, and I adhered firmly to its ideals and principles. The course of events in the present war have hardly been of a kind to make me particularly enthusiastic about the developments of later times. A powerful, self-contained State in Bismarck's sense was the world in which I preferred my thoughts to move. Discipline and hard work within the Fatherland seemed to me better than cosmopolitan imaginings. Moreover, I fail to see that any citizen has rights on whom equal duties are not imposed.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Out of My Life (London: Cassell, 1920), pp. 236-237
Retirement

War, World, Home, Imagination

“Let your self go. If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered, and engaged, you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will be a better person. That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul, or in anything supernatural.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Secret, World, Beauty, Exercises

“So as you may see in Daniel and his companions, that would rather choose to burn, and be cast to the lions—than they would bow to the idol which Nebuchadnezzar had set up. When this 'slight offense', in the world's account, and a hot fiery furnace stood in competition, that they must either fall into sin, or be cast into the fiery furnace—such was their tenderness of the honor and glory of God, and their hatred and indignation against sin, that they would rather burn than sin!”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

God, World

“The Sultan then returned [from Jalor] to Delhi… and after his arrival ‘not a vestige or name remained of idol temples which had raised their heads on high; and the light of faith shone out from the darkness of infidelity… and the moon of religion and the state became resplendent from the heaven of prosperity and glory.”

Iltutmish (1210–1236) Sultan of Mamluk Sultanate

Delhi. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. II, p. 238-39.

Faith, Religion, Light

“He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is succour to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave,
Our God is marching on.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

First manuscript version (19 November 1861).
The Battle Hymn of the Republic (1861)

Wisdom, God, World, Soul

“Man alone consumes more flesh than all the other animals together devour; he is, then, the greatest destroyer; and this more from custom than necessity. Instead of using with moderation the blessings which are offered him, instead of disposing of them with equity, instead of increasing them in proportion as he destroys, the rich man places all his glory in consuming, in one day, at his table, as much as would be necessary to support many families: he equally abuses both animals and his fellow-creatures, some of whom remain starving and languishing in misery, and labour only to satisfy his immoderate appetite, and more insatiable vanity, and who, by destroying others through wantonness, destroys himself by excess. Nevertheless, man, like some other animals, might live on vegetables.”

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon book Histoire Naturelle

Histoire Naturelle (1753), trans. J. S. Barr, London: H. D. Symonds, 1797, vol. V, pp. 209 https://books.google.it/books?id=9QpTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA209-210.

Family, Support, Animals

“[Margaret Thatcher] wraps herself in the Union Jack and exploits the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors and airmen in the Falkland Islands for purely party advantage – and hopes to get away with it. It wasn't a very credible approach from the word 'go' because this Prime Minister, who glories in slaughter, who has taken advantage of the superb professionalism of our armed forces, is at this very moment lending the military dictatorship in Buenos Aires millions of pounds to buy weapons – including weapons made in Britain – to kill British servicemen. That is an act of stupefying hypocrisy.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

Speech in Birmingham (1 June 1983), quoted in The Times (2 June 1983), p. 1. Healey withdrew the remark "glories in slaughter" the next day and claimed he should have said "conflict" rather than "slaughter" (The Times (3 June 1983), p. 1)
1980s

Hope

“Glories
Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams,
And shadows soon decaying.”

John Ford (dramatist) The Broken Heart

Act III, sc. v.
The Broken Heart (c. 1625-33)

Dreams

“It is impossible to understand Art and the glory of its history without avowing religious spirituality and the mythical roots that lead us to the very reason of being of the artistic phenomenon. Without the one or the other there would be no Egyptian pyramids, nor those of ancient Mexico. Would the Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals have existed?”

Luis Barragán (1902–1988) Mexican architect

In his acceptance of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1980

Art, History, Understanding

“Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself. Where are true peace and true glory? Are they not in God?”

Isabella Fyvie Mayo (1843–1914) Scottish poet, novelist, reformer

Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 448.

Men, God, Peace, Art

“The Greeks never thought to unite all Greek speakers in one political union. Because each Greek gloried in his singular excellence—and each Greek clan gloried similarly—it was hard enough to unite a city. Each city or polis—from which come our words politics, politician, metropolis—thought itself unrivaled in some essential quality and reveled in its reputation.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.IV The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

“He had the folly to believe that to be feared is glory.”
Metui demens credebat honorem.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book I, line 149
Punica

Fear

“God Himself is the nearest to hand, as the absolutely simple must be, and at the same time the most distant, as the absolutely simple must also be. God Himself is the irresolvable and at the same time that which fills and embraces everything else. God Himself in His being for Himself is the one being which stands in need of nothing else and at the same time the one being by which every thing else came into being and exists. God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can always begin with confidence and without need of excuse. And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse. God Himself is simple, so simple that in all His glory He can be near to the simplest perception and also laugh at the most profound or acute thinking so simple that He reduces everyone to silence, and then allows and requires everyone boldly to make Him the object of their thought and speech. He is so simple that to think and speak correctly of Him and to live correctly before Him does not in fact require any special human complexities or for that matter any special human simplicities, so that occasionally and according to our need He may permit and require both human complexity and human simplicity, and occasionally they may both be forbidden us…”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

God, Confidence, Thinking, Silence

“Hail to the land whereon we tread,
Our fondest boast!
The sepulchres of mighty dead,
The truest hearts that ever bled,
Who sleep on glory’s brightest bed,
A fearless host:
No slave is here: our unchained feet,
Walk freely as the waves that beat
Our coast.”

James Gates Percival (1795–1856) American geologis, poet, and surgeon

New England, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Sleep, Heart, Dead

“My mustache speaks to me… it says, 'Together, we will return the NBA to the glory of its mustache days. Pistol Pete, Kurt Rambis and Clyde Frazier.' And in the offseason, my mustache and I will drive around in a muscle car solving mysteries. Times will be good. My mustache is very wise.”

Adam Morrison (1984) American basketball player

2006 Commercial for EA Sports NBA Live 07.

Cars, Time

“And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics, since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

27 November 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Religion, Business, Parting

“Son of my son," begun the king, "O Oscar, pride of youth! I saw the shining of thy sword, I gloried in my race. Pursue the fame of our fathers; be thou what they have been, when Trenmor lived, the first of men, and Trathal the father of heroes! They fought the battle in their youth. They are the song of bards. O Oscar! bend the strong in arm: but spare the feeble hand. Be thou a stream of many tides against the foes of thy people; but like the gale, that moves the grass, to those who ask thine aid. So Trenmor lived; such Trathal was; and such has Fingal been. My arm was the support of the injured; the weak rested behind the lightning of my steel.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Book III. Compare: Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. ("Spare the conquered, battle down the proud.") Virgil, Aeneid (19 BC), Book VI, line 853 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald).
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

Men, People, Youth, Support

“My meaning (dear Mother) is in these sonnets, to declare my resolution to be, that my poor abilities in poetry, shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Letter to His Mother (1609)

God

“Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.”

James Martineau (1805–1900) English religious philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 8.

Affliction

“No, they've got no time for glory in the Infantry.
No, they've got no use for praises loudly sung,
But in every soldier's heart in all the Infantry
Shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young.”

Frank Loesser (1910–1969) American songwriter

The Ballad of Rodger Young http://www.wegrokit.com/shines.htm

Time, Heart

“How shall we rank thee upon glory's page,
Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage?”

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

To Thomas Hume.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“This rich, proud Empire did not pay its children, who had maintained and built up its glory and upon whom they had to depend in future against every foe, enough to keep themselves, their wives, and their children above a state of semi-starvation. (Cries of "Shame.") The land of Britain, which ought to be rearing a virile, healthy, independent, prosperous people, was held under conditions which positively discouraged capital, enterprise, and brains, sapped independence and undermined vitality. The condition of things was one which demanded the immediate attention of every man who loved his native land and who had any heart to sympathize with humanity in despair.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Liberal Club (31 January 1913), quoted in The Times (1 February 1913), p. 8.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Love, Children, People, Future

“Another change in the constitution relates to the length of the tenure of the presidential office. In the new constitution it is six years instead of four, and the President rendered ineligible for a re-election. This is certainly a decidedly conservative change. It will remove from the incumbent all temptation to use his office or exert the powers confided to him for any objects of personal ambition. The only incentive to that higher ambition which should move and actuate one holding such high trusts in his hands, will be the good of the people, the advancement, prosperity, happiness, safety, honor, and true glory of the confederacy.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Happiness, People, Confidence, Change

“Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 389
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Drink, Future, Dead

“Dubbed as a Knight of the Order of Saint Sebastian, I espoused the cause of pure colour, which has been invaded by guile, occupied and oppressed in cowardly fashion by line and its manifestation; drawing in Art. I aimed to defend and deliver it, and lead it to triumph and final glory.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1956; p. 27
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

Art, Fashion, Drawing

“26. And [the Messiah] said unto them, "If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?"27. "Of course, Master!" cried the many. "It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!"28. "No matter what those tortures, no matter how difficult the task?"29. "Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked," said they.30. "And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, "if God spoke directly to your face and said, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' What would you do then?"31. And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

God, Happiness, Pleasure, World

“Glory paid to ashes comes too late.”
Cineri gloria sera venit.

Martial book Epigrammata

I, 25, line 8.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)

“The deed is everything, the glory nothing.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Act IV, A High Mountain Range
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

“Could I new-model Nature, your sex should rule supreme, there should be no other ambition but that of pleasing the ladies, no other warfare but the contention of obsequious lovers, nor any glory but the bliss of being approved by the Fair.”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 46: 15 Aug 1777, to Miss C___ ).

Sex, Lovers, Nature

“Death was to be my glory, but destiny has refused it.”

Pierre Corneille The Death of Pompey

Ma mort était ma gloire, et le destin m'en prive.
Cornélie, act III, scene iv.
La Mort de Pompée (The Death of Pompey) (1642)

Death

“Now after the time of their preparatory trial is over, they are parted into four classes; and so far are the juniors inferior to the seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors, they must wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company of a foreigner. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet; nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe also. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them, no, nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life, Death, Pain, War

“Is there any death here in our camp? Yes, yes! Three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, the noblest band that ever trod the earth, died to make this camp a camp of glory and of liberty forever. But there are no dead issues here. There are no dead ideas here. Hang out our banner from under the blue sky this night, until it shall sweep the green turf under your feet. It hangs over our camp. Read away up under the stars the inscription we have written on it, lo these twenty-five years.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, An Appeal to Young Men (1879)

Death, Star, Idea, Reading

“How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Thalaba the Destroyer http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/thalaba_frag.html, Bk. I, st. 1 (1800).

Beauty, Night

“The soul of a true christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

"Personal Narrative" (1739), from The Works of President Edwards (1830) Vol. I, edited by Sereno B. Dwight.

Soul, Spring, Flowers, Drink

“Hark how all the welkin rings,,
"Glory to the Kings of kings;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!"
Joyful, all ye nations, rise.
Join the triumph of the skies.
Universal nature say
"Christ is born today!"”

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) English Methodist and hymn writer

"Hymn for Christmas-Day" (Full text online)
Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739)

God, Peace, Nature, Universe

“These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;—

Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the laurel the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.”

Francis Miles Finch (1827–1907) American judge

The Blue and the Gray, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Waiting

“The energies of our system will decay; the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

The Foundations of Belief (1895).

Solitude, Sun

“Do not discuss God and virtue. Do not discuss the homeland and its history. Do not discuss the authority and prestige. Do not discuss the family and its moral. Not discuss the glory of work and their duty.”

António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal

Quoted in Salazar: Biographical Study - page 368; of Franco Nogueira - Published by Atlantis Publishing, 1977

God, Family, History

“Henry heard the vote announced which gave Sumner the needed number. Slipping under the arms of the bystanders, he ran home as hard as he could, and burst into the dining-room where Mr. Sumner was seated at table with the family. He enjoyed the glory of telling Sumner that he was elected; it was probably the proudest moment in the life of either.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life, Family, Home

“Can it be out of the kindness of my heart that I carry out such a labor of mercy on a people who once captured me when they wrecked my father's house and carried off his servants? For by descent I was a freeman, born of a decurion father; yet I have sold this nobility of mine, I am not ashamed, nor do I regret that it might have meant some advantage to others. In short, I am a slave in Christ to this faraway people for the indescribable glory of "everlasting life which is in Jesus Christ our Lord."”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)

Life, People, Heart, Christ

“It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a " Christ within us, the hope of glory."”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 68.

Life, God, Hope, Christ

“In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic; and, amid the very thunders of battle, we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and with ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that, when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us its glories and its blessings.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)
Context: In the great crisis of the war, God brought us face to face with the mighty truth, that we must lose our own freedom or grant it to the slave. In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic; and, amid the very thunders of battle, we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and with ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that, when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us its glories and its blessings. The Omniscient Witness will appear in judgment against us if we do not fulfill that covenant. Have we done it? Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom? Is it mere negation? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained, of not being bought and sold, branded and scourged? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion, and it may well be questioned whether slavery were not better. But liberty is no negation. It is a substantial, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration, 'that all men are created equal'; that the sanction of all just government is 'the consent of the governed.' Can these be realized until each man has a right to be heard on all matters relating to himself? The plain truth is, that each man knows his own interest best It has been said, 'If he is compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he be required implicitly to obey, he should be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at what it is worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation, no persons disqualified except through their own default.' I would not insult your intelligence by discussing so plain a truth, had not the passion and prejudice of this generation called in question the very axioms of the Declaration.

Help

“Go to the cross, and meet there God in sacrifice. Behold Him as Jesus bearing your sin, receiving the shafts of your enmity! Embrace Him, believe in Him, take Him to your inmost heart. Do this, and you shall feel sin die within you, and a glorious quickening, Christ the power of God, Christ in you the hope of glory, shall be consciously risen upon you, as the morn of your new creation.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 232.

God, Hope, Feeling, Heart

“Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it only serves to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Life Thoughts (1858), p. 33

Strong, Heart, For Men

“Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

No. 139 (9 August 1711)
The Spectator (1711-1714)

Love, Life

“The untransacted destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent — to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean — to animate the many hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward — to set the principle of self-government at work — to agitate these herculean masses — to establish a new order in human affairs — to set free the enslaved — to regenerate superannuated nations — to change darkness into light — to stir up the sleep of a hundred centuries — to teach old nations a new civilization — to confirm the destiny of the human race — to carry the career of mankind to its culminating point — to cause stagnant people to be re-born — to perfect science — to emblazon history with the conquest of peace — to shed a new and resplendent glory upon mankind — to unite the world in one social family — to dissolve the spell of tyranny and exalt charity — to absolve the curse that weighs down humanity, and to shed blessings round the world!
Divine task! immortal mission! Let us tread fast and joyfully the open trail before us! Let every American heart open wide for patriotism to glow undimmed, and confide with religious faith in the sublime and prodigious destiny of his well-loved country.”

William Gilpin

Address to the U.S. Senate (2 March 1846); quoted in Mission of the North American People, Geographical, Social, and Political (1873), by William Gilpin, p. 124.

Love, People, World, Family

“When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or ploughed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to be above all others the Range of Light.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 1: The Sierra Nevada

Mountain, Tree, Light, Heart

“I ached everywhere. It was hard to separate the dull agony of the shattered leg from the ache in my head and my back and my guts. My skull felt as if there were a ball of mercury in it that shifted ponderously long seconds after my head itself turned. The vertigo made me sick again, but I had nothing left to vomit. I hung on the tangle of branches and contemplated the glories of adventure.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 14 (p. 272)

“Gonzalo threw many books into the bottom of the leaky vessel that took Prospero out on to the sea away from Italy and Europe into exile. Shakespeare does not, of course, elaborate what these volumes were. Prospero's Books speculates. There would need perhaps to be books on navigation and survival, there would need to be books for an elderly scholar to learn how to rear and educate a young daughter, how to colonise an island, farm it, subjugate its inhabitants, identify its plants and husband its wild beasts. There would need to be books to offer solace and advise patience and put past glory and present despondency into perspective. There would need to be books to encourage revenge.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Prospero's Books

Books, Education, Revenge, Learning

“In short, greatly as I admire all that has been said here to-night, gladly and gratefully as I recognise the genuinely philosophic temper and the authentic philosophic place it all most certainly has, I am still moved to say that my honoured colleagues, in this their common underlying conception, have to my mind all "missed the mark and come short of the glory of God." They have not seized nor expressed the complete Ideal of the Reason.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.89

God, Night

“It is the glory and happiness of our excellent constitution, that to prevent any injustice no man is to be concluded by the first judgment; but that if he apprehends himself to be aggrieved, he has another Court to which he can resort for relief; for this purpose the law furnishes him with appeals, with writs of error and false judgment.”

John Pratt (1657–1725) English judge and politician

King v. Chancellor, &c, of the University of Cambridge (1720), 1 Str. Rep. 564.

Happiness, Law, Error, Falseness

“The honourable gentleman has alluded to the distresses and financial embarrassments of the country. I should be the last man to speak of those distresses in a slighting manner; but in considering the amount of our burdens, we ought not to forget under what circumstances those difficulties have been incurred. Engaged in an arduous struggle, single-handed and unaided, not only against all the powers of Europe, but with the confederated forces of the civilized world, our object was not merely military glory—not the temptation of territorial acquisition—not even what might be considered a more justifiable object, the assertion of violated rights and the vindication of national honour; but we were contending for our very existence as an independent nation. When the political horizon was thus clouded, when no human foresight could point out from what quarter relief was to be expected, when the utmost effort of national energy was not to despair, I would put to the honourable gentleman whether, if at that period it could have been shown that Europe might be delivered from its thraldom, but that this contingent must be purchased at the price of a long and patient endurance of our domestic burdens, we should not have accepted the conditions with gratitude? I lament as deeply as the honourable gentleman the burdens of the country; but it should be recollected that they were the price which we bad agreed to pay for our freedom and independence.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (16 May 1820), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 15-16.
1820s

World, Effort, Freedom, Despair

“Glory — once achieved, what is it worth?”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

“Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon”, p. 109.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"

Spring, Heart, Housing, Clothes

“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)