Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet
"Fragment of a Greek Tragedy". This parody was first written in 1883, but quoted here from a revised version of 1927.
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
"Washington and the Puget Sound" in Picturesque California (1888-1890); reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 20
1880s
“For friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”
Nam et secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Section 22
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)
Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918
Jon Anderson (1944) English singer
Lyrics of "Loved by the Sun", on the soundtrack of the film Legend (1986).
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland
Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor
Anticipation (2008)
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Past and Present (1843)
Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper
The Manifesto, Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1 (1998)
Albums, Singles and compilations
“Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?”
James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher
Book i. Stanza 1.
The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771)
R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet
"Groping", p. 12
Frequencies (1978)
“Thank you for the sun / The one that shines on everyone / Who feels love.”
Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician
Who Feels Love
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (2000)
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)
1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)
André Breton (1896–1966) French writer
Quote from Anthologie de l'humour noir, André Breton; as cited in Arp, ed. Serge Fauchereau, Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, Spain, 1988
after 1930
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet
Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde
el cuchillo que escodí allí por temor de que me mataras,
y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina
acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de tu pie:
bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces,
de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría tu nombre,
y la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre
hecho de impenetrables y substancias divinas.
Tango del Viudo (The Widower's Tango), Residencia I (Residence I), III, stanza 3.
Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh:
Buried next to the coconut tree you will later find
the knife that I hid there for fear that you would kill me,
and now suddenly I should like to smell its kitchen steel
accustomed to the weight of your hand and the shine of your foot:
under the moisture of the earth, among the deaf roots,
of all human labguages the poor thing would know only your name,
and the thick earth does not understand your name
made of impenetrable and divine substances.
Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933)
Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman
Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.
Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer
Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero As King
Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor
Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine on You.
Song lyrics, Blue Moon (1996)
Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 351.
Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator
Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey
“For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
Ode.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician
(Straight to Your Heart) Like a Cannonball
Song lyrics, Tupelo Honey (1971)
“That crystal river keeps its pools of blue water free from all stain above its shallow bed, and slowly draws along its fair stream of greenish hue. One would scarce believe it was moving; so softly along its shady banks, while the birds sing sweet in rivalry, it leads along in a shining flood its waters that tempt to sleep.”
Caeruleas Ticinus aquas et stagna uadoso
perspicuus seruat turbari nescia fundo
ac nitidum uiridi lente trahit amne liquorem.
uix credas labi: ripis tam mitis opacis
argutos inter uolucrum certamine cantus
somniferam ducit lucenti gurgite lympham.
Book IV, lines 82–87
Punica
Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet
Non copre abito vil la nobil luce,
E quanto è in lei d'altero e di gentile;
E fuor la maesta regia traluce
Per gli atti ancor de l'esercizio umile.
Canto VII, stanza 18 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.
Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy
Upon awarding the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor posthumously to Audie Murphy, the most highly decorated American soldier of World War II. (29 October 2013)
2013
Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist
Philadelphia Freedom (1975)
Song lyrics, Singles
James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician
"The War of Caros"
The Poems of Ossian
Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer
"Marlene Dietrich" (1967), p. 215
Profiles (1990)
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
"Mind and Motive"
Winterslow: Essays and Characters (1850)
George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher
Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.258
Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician
June 10, 1850 in a speech before Congress on the Fugitive Slave Act. Page 123, Vol. 1, Palmer http://web.archive.org/web/20131209113445/http://thaddeusstevenssociety.com/Quotes.html. In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens <br class="br">1850s
Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano
Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. XII (p. 346)
Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) Italian poet and teacher
-lines 1-20 (as Printed by the Nobel Prize Library)
Hymn to Satan (1865), Inno a Satana
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
Source: Discipleship (1937), The Visible Community, p. 118.
John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter
Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' third lecture, Royal Institution (9 June 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie; as quoted in: 'A brief history of weather in European landscape art', John E. Thornes, in Weather Volume 55, Issue 10 Oct. 2000, p. 366-67
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)
Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) American priest
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 20.
Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Speech in the Reichstag (19 February 1918), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), pp. 149-150.
1910s
Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter
The Wind Cries Mary
Song lyrics, Are You Experienced? (1967)
John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer
These lines were not written by Newton. They have often been accreted to various hymns, including "Amazing Grace", since the mid-nineteenth century.
Misattributed
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician
Ivry: A Song of the Huguenots http://www.bartleby.com/246/76.html, l. 29 (1824)
Helen Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye (1807–1867) British songwriter, composer, poet and author
Lament of the Irish Emigrant
“To Greece we give our shining blades.”
Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter
Evenings in Greece, First Evening.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Allen W. Wood (1942) academic
Kantian Ethics (2008)
Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist
The Great Wall of China.
Song lyrics, River of Dreams (1993)
“The bright moon shines between the pines.
The crystal stream flows over the pebbles.”
Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman
"Autumn Twilight in the Mountains" (山居秋暝), trans. Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Gärdestad (1948–2018) Swedish song lyricist, architect and lecturer
English version of "Satellit" (non-album song representing Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 1979), lyrics written by Kenneth
Song lyrics, With Ted Gärdestad, Satellite (1979)
Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer
"What is Love? Twelve Men of the Screen Give Their Ideas". Photoplay, February 1925, p. 36. (Photoplay Publishing Company). https://archive.org/stream/pho28chic#page/n163/mode/2up
Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer
The Lie (1608)
Thich Nhat Tu (1969) Vietnamese philosopher
Inner Freedom: A Spiritual Journey for Prison Inmates (2008)
Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet
"They Are All Gone," st. 5.
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens
Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer
Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 525-526.
Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLIX : "The Rain Descended..."; Helen to Arthur
John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion
Prefatory Address to King Francis as translated by Henry Beveridge, p. 16.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test
Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 25
Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea
The Nore to Hope Point
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16
George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter
By Still Waters (1906)
Gardiner Spring (1785–1873) American clergyman
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 117.
Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader
trijagadavana hataharijananidhuvana
nijavanarucijitaśataśatavidhuvana ।
taruvaravibhavavinatasuravaravana
jayati viratighana iva raghuvaravana ॥
Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam
Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia
The Killing Season, Episode one: The Prime Minister and his Loyal Deputy (2006–09)
Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period
Book 10: Exposition of Canon II; this is the earliest known description of the inverted image produced by a camera obscura,; as translated in by Ian Jonston in The Mozi (2010), p. 489
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist
Source: Psychology: An elementary textbook, 1908, p. 6; Partly cited in: Peter Ashworth, Man Cheung Chung (2007) Phenomenology and Psychological Science, p. 54.
William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 556.
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book VIII, line 643.
“Give it time, girl, the fire feels divine.
The sweetest things, they burn before they shine.”
Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist
Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)
Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa
I take that to mean that any man who entrusts to language the task of presenting the ineffable Light is really and truly a liar; not because of any hatred on his part of the truth, but because of the feebleness of his instrument for expressing the thing thought of.
On Virginity, Chapter 10
Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)
"Labrador"
Song lyrics, Charmer (2012)
Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer
The Rubaiyat (1120)