Quotes about sweets
page 13

“Though fancy and the might of rhyme,
That turneth like the tide,
Have borne me many a musing time,
Beloved, from thy side

Ah yet, I pray thee, deem not Sweet,
Those hours were given in vain;
Within these covers to thy feet
I bring them back again”

Archibald Lampman (1861–1899) Canadian poet

Dedication to His Wife, Among the Millet and Other Poems (J. Duire & Son Ottawa 1888).

Time

“How innocent, how beautiful thy sleep!
Sweet one, 'tis peace and joy to gaze on thee!”

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

Sleeping Child
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Peace, Beauty, Sleep, Joy

“Say what some poets will, Nature is not so much her own ever-sweet interpreter, as the mere supplier of that cunning alphabet, whereby selecting and combining as he pleases, each man reads his own peculiar lesson according to his own peculiar mind and mood.”

Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. XXV, ch. 4
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

Mood, Nature, Reading

“He loves not, he loves me, he loves me not,
He loves me, — yes, thou last leaf, yes,
I'll pluck thee not, for that last sweet guess!
" He loves me,””

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

(13th November 1824) The Decision of the Flower
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Love

“Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

The Mother (1945)

Children, Silence, Forgetting

“I saw with open eyes, Singing birds sweet, Sold in the shops, For the people to eat, Sold in the shops of, Stupidity Street.”

Ralph Hodgson (1871–1962) British writer

"Stupidity Street"
Poems (1917)

People, Stupidity, Bird, Singing

“A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet,
A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet,
A bridal bed and a bier.
Thine be the kisses, maid,
And smiling Love’s alarms;
And thou, pale youth, be laid
In the grave’s cold arms.
Each in his own charms,
Death and Hymen both are here;
So up with scythe and torch,
And to the old church porch,
While all the bells ring clear:
And rosy, rosy the bed shall bloom,
And earthy, earthy heap up the tomb.”

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849) English poet, dramatist and physician

A Cypress-Bough, and A Rose-Wreath Sweet, from The Poetical Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1890).

Love, Death, Youth, Smile

“He was known to his countrymen as the Nightingale, but his own sweet-sounding name of Bird's-meadow (Vogelweide) suggests even more directly the pure, true, flute-like strain which he poured into Europe’s choir of voices.”

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet

Laurie Magnus A General Sketch of European Literature in the Centuries of Romance (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1918) pp. 27-28.
Praise

Bird

“Everyone now, they look back and they're like, "What happened to your sweet image that you used to be?" And I'm like, then when you came out you thought I was too provocative. It's like you can never win. No matter what you do, at the end of the day you can't please everybody, you know. I'm not here to please…”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

Diane Sawyer interview http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2003_11_23/story_1024.asp, 60 Minutes (23 November 2003)

“When you do what the poor weary dove did — when you just betake yourself to the one only ark for safety, the infinite Love will put forth His hand, and draw you in! Into union with Christ! Into renewing grace and supporting strength! Into peace! Oh! wondrous peace; oh! sweet, satisfying peace; oh! peace of God that passeth understanding!”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 151.

Love, God, Peace, Understanding

“Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet
To think how monie counsels sweet,
How monie lengthened, sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!”

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter

Source: Tam o' Shanter (1790), Line 33.

Thinking

“Desiree,
Oh, Desiree.
There I was found
By the sweet passion sound
Of your loving song.
Time was right, the night was long.Remember Desiree,
Oh, Desiree.
And though somehow I knew
I could only have you 'til the morning light,
The night was long, the time was right.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Desiree
Song lyrics, I'm Glad You're Here with Me Tonight (1977)

Love, Light, Passion, Time

“For tho' it is certainly more laudable, and a thing of greater moment, to be generous, constant, and magnanimous, than merely to be polite and well bred; yet we find, from daily experience, that sweetness of manners, a genteel carriage, and, polite address are frequently of more advantage to those who are so happy as to be possessed of them, than any greatness of soul or brightness of parts are to those who are adorned with those more shining talents. For those slighter accomplishments are of more frequent, or rather of constant and daily use on every occasion; as we are under a necessity of conversing daily with other people: Whereas justice, fortitude, and those other more exalted virtues, are of much less frequent occurrence. For neither is a generous or a brave man obliged to exhibit those virtues, every hour of the day (which indeed would be impossible,) neither has a wise man, or a man of great genius, an opportunity of displaying those extraordinary talents, but very rarely. As much therefore as those greater qualities exceed those more trifling accomplishments in weight and importance; so much the latter exceed the former in number and more frequent use.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 3

Happiness, People, Justice, Soul

“The beauty of the world consists wholly of sweet mutual consents, either within itself or with the supreme being.”

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

"The Beauty of the World" (c.1725), from the notebook The Images of Divine Things, The Shadows of Divine Things, The Language and Lessons of Nature (published 1948).

World, Beauty

“Dance on, dance on, we see, we see
Youth goes, alack, and with it glee,
A boy the old man ne’er can be;
Maternal thirty scarce can find
The sweet sixteen long left behind.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Youth and Age http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/youthage.html, st. 1.

Youth, Boy, Dance, Maternity

“Although Fox's private character was deformed by indulgence in vicious pleasures, it was in the eyes of his contemporaries largely redeemed by the sweetness of his disposition, the buoyancy of his spirits, and the unselfishness of his conduct. As a politician he had liberal sentiments, and hated oppression and religious intolerance. He constantly opposed the influence of the crown, and, although he committed many mistakes, and had in George III an opponent of considerable knowledge of kingcraft and immense resources, the struggle between him and the king, as far as the two men were concerned, was after all a drawn game…the coalition of 1783 shows that he failed to appreciate the importance of political principles and was ignorant of political science…Although his speeches are full of common sense, he made serious mistakes on some critical occasions, such as were the struggle of 1783–4, and the dispute about the regency in 1788. The line that he took with reference to the war with France, his idea that the Treason and Sedition bills were destructive of the constitution, and his opinion in 1801 that the House of Commons would soon cease to be of any weight, are instances of his want of political insight. The violence of his language constantly stood in his way; in the earlier period of his career it gave him a character for levity; later on it made his coalition with North appear especially reprehensible, and in his latter years afforded fair cause for the bitterness of his opponents. The circumstances of his private life helped to weaken his position in public estimation. He twice brought his followers to the brink of ruin and utterly broke up the whig party. He constantly shocked the feelings of his countrymen, and ‘failed signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation’ (LECKY, Hist. iii. 465 sq). With the exception of the Libel Bill of 1792, the credit of which must be shared with others, he left comparatively little mark on the history of national progress. Great as his talents were in debate, he was deficient in statesmanship and in some of the qualities most essential to a good party leader.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

William Hunt, 'Fox, Charles James (1749–1806)', Dictionary of National Biography (1889).
About

Life, Men, Hate, War

“Oh, Mexico.
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low.
Moon's so bright like to light up the night,
Make everything all right.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Mexico"
Song lyrics, Gorilla (1975)

Light, Sun, Night

“I sketched a young mother with her child at her breast, sitting in a smoky hut. If only I could someday paint what I felt then. A sweet woman, an image of charity. She was nursing her big, year-old bambino... And the woman gave her life and her youth and her power tot the child in utter simplicity, unaware that she was a heroine.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in: Witzling (1991, p. 193) and Delia Gaze (2001) Concise Dictionary of Women Artists, p. 489
1897

Life, Youth, Painting

“Hands, touchin' hands,
Reachin' out, touchin' me, touchin' you.
Sweet Caroline.
Good times never seemed so good.
I've been inclined
To believe they never would.
But now I, look at the night
And it don't seem so lonely.
We fill it up with only two.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Sweet Caroline
Song lyrics, Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show (1969)

Time, Night

“O my love my dear lady
The world is not very big
There is only room for our wonder
And the light leaning winds of heaven
Are not more sweet or pure
Than your mouth on my throat
O my love there are larks in our morning
And the finding flame of your hands
And the moss on the bank of the river
And the butterflies
And the whirling-mad
Butterflies!”

Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) American writer and poet

"'O My Love the Pretty Towns'"

Love, World, Light, Madness

“All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God;
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Asia, Act II, sc. v, l. 39
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Love, God, Feeling, Light

“Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa
I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all.
Sad songs is all I know.
I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all.
Sad songs is all I know.
It has a sweet melody tonight
Anybody can sing it any old time.
What's in your heart puts you in a groove
And when you sing this song,
It'll make you're whole body move.”

Otis Redding (1941–1967) American singer, songwriter and record producer

Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song), co-written with Steve Cropper.
Song lyrics, Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul (1966)

Sadness, Singing, Time, Heart

“There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?”

George Borrow book Lavengro

Source: Lavengro (1851), Ch. 25

Life, Star, Sun, Night

“What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

No. 1, "Walking With God"
Olney Hymns (1779)

World, Peace, Memory

“The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches' Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-spattered scene of nameless tragedies.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

God, Children, Angels, Heart

“Nothing is so beautiful as the first few minutes alone with someone who might love one and someone whom one might love. There is nothing so quiet as those minutes, nothing so saturated with sweet expectancy. It is for the sake of those few minutes that one loves, not the many that follow. Never again, they knew, would anything so beautiful happen to them. They would be more joyous perhaps; more ardent too, and immeasurably content with their own bodies, and each other's. But never again would it be so beautiful.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 190

Love, Beauty

“Now was the present, now was the time containing that sweet union of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, spirit, will and imagination named Nancy.”

Jack Vance book Big Planet

Source: Big Planet (1957), Chapter 8 “A Matter of Vitamins” (p. 80)

Imagination, Time

“Ah! American cigarettes are like the American soul - sweet and light.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, February 12, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Soul, Light

“Love taught him shame; and shame, with love at strife,
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), Cymon and Iphigenia, Line 133.

Love, Life

“Sweetness of life depends to its bitterness.”

Javad Alizadeh (1953) cartoonist, journalist and humorist

Quoted in Humor & Caricature (September 1995), p. 3

Life, Dependency

“I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Taliesin 1952"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

World, Beauty, Fools, Passion

“I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (6&7 December 1856), as published in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (1958), p. 444; a line within this has been most quoted since 1865 in the form "I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it."

Thinking, Sense, Parting, Wealth

“I’ll give you one thing to mull over, though. If the body’s such a valueless piece of pork, and we’ll all meet each other in the sweet bye and bye, and so on, why’re you busting every gut you own to get back to your wife?”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 11 (p. 87)

“In the first stage, that of jubilatio, a person becomes intensely aware of the dear signs of his love that god has marvelously given us in the heavens and on earth, how marvelously much good he has done for us and all creatures, how everything blossoms, sprouts forth, and is filled with God, and how unimaginable the generosity of God has inundated all creatures with his great gifts and how God has gone searching for him, showered him with gifts, carried him, advised him, waited for him, cared for him…and to what inexpressible nearness he has invited him, and how the most Holy God has expectantly awaited him eternally so that he might be filled with joy forever. And when a person experiences this fully through loving insight, The Lord leads a person out of himself into himself there is born in him great genuine joy. The person who perceives these things with genuine love is so flooded with an interior joy that his frail body cannot contain this joy and erupts in its own way…And in this way our Lord showers him with great sweetness and gives him inwardly an embrace and palpable union. Thus does God lure, pull and yank a person, first of all out of himself, and then out of all dissimilarity to himself…”

Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) German theologian

Sermons, Sermon 3

Love, God, Way, Search

“When I started this song I was still thirty-three
The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free
Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be
And I fantasized some tragedy'd be soon curtailing me
Well just today I had my birthday
I made it thirty-four
Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore
I've got this problem with my aging I no longer can ignore
A tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

There Only Was One Choice
Song lyrics, Dance Band on the Titanic (1977)

Age, Star, Birthday, Problem

“As aromatic plants bestow
No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crush'd or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Act I.
The Captivity, An Oratorio (1764)

“It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song
You can't believe it; you were always singing along
It was so easy and the words so sweet
You can't remember; you try to move your feet.”

Regina Spektor (1980) American singer-songwriter and pianist

"Eet"
Far (2009)

Singing, Forgetting

“Now let us gather into one bouquet, from the King's garden, these seven fragrant flowers: Jesus the Son of God; Jesus our sin-bearer; Jesus the giver of eternal life; Jesus the keeper of our undying souls; Jesus the hearer of our prayers; Jesus the chastener who can turn crosses into crowns; and Jesus the wonder-worker who changes us into eternal likeness unto Himself! These flowers will keep sweet till heaven dawns.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 102.

Life, God, Soul, Flowers

“As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Nightingales http://www.poetry-online.org/bridges_nightingales.htm, st. 3. <br class="br">Poetry

Dreams, Spring, Night

“There is an indolence in grief
Which will not even seek relief.
What is the toil, or care, or pain,
The human heart cannot sustain?
Enough if struggling can create
A change or colour in our fate;
But where's the spirit that can cope
With listless suffering, when hope,
The last of misery's allies,
Sickens of its sweet self, and dies.”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Pain, Fate, Hope, Suffering

“And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light,
And if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), I Have It On Good Authority

Life, Light, Night

“Beggening their voyage with salty deep, By sweet water they returned, Big merchants trade not with Gold but with Pearls and Gemstones…such wealth, these Sailors form distant lands had brought.”

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai book Shah Jo Risalo

-Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Jo Risalo
Shah Jo Risalo

Water, Distant, Wealth

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Coon Tree," The New Yorker (14 June 1956), The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South (1962); reprinted in Essays of E.B. White (1977)

Feeling, Nature, Time, Future

“In my solitude I sing to myself a sweet lullaby, as sweet as my mother used to sing to me.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

Solitude, Singing

“It is under such cultural circumstances that our contemporaries, systematically cretinised by the mechanicism and the architecture of auto-punition, by psychological bureaucratic congratulations, by ideological disorder and imaginative fasting, by affective paternal hungers of all kinds, seek in vain - to bite into the doting and triumphal sweetness of the plump, atavistic, tender, militarist and territorial hack of some hitlerian nurse, in order at last to be able, no matter how, to communicate with the totemic consecrated host that has just been elevated in front of their own noses and which, as is known and understood, was nothing else than the spiritual and symbolic nourishment that catholicism offered during the centuries to appease the cannibal frenzy of moral and irrational hungers.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from from: Dalí's essay, 1935: Conquest of the Irrational https://ia601209.us.archive.org/4/items/DaliConquestIrrational/412994-Dali_ReducedPDF.pdf - Chapter: 'The Waters in which we Swim; Julien Levi Publisher, New York, 1935. p. 8 <br class="br">Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940

Hunger, Imagination, Communication

“And we danced all night to a soul fairy band.
And she kissed me just right like only a lonely angel can.
She felt just right just like as sweet as a spirit in the night.
In the night baby don't know what she do to you?
Spirits in the night, in the night.
Stand up now and let her shoot right through you.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Spirit in the Night"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Angels, Soul, Kiss, Dance

“She stood amid the morning dew,
And sang her earliest measure sweet,
Sang as the lark sings, speeding fair,
to touch and taste the purer air”

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905) writer

Coolidge tribute to fellow poet Jean Ingelow from Preface to Poems by Jean Ingelow, Volume II, Roberts Bros 1896 kindle ebook ASIN B0082C1UAI .

Singing, Speed

“I'm gonna miss that smile, I'm gonna miss you my friend
Even though it hurts the way it ended up, I'd do it all again
So play it sweet in heaven 'cause that's right where you wanna be
I'm not cryin' 'cause I feel so sorry for you, I'm cryin' for me.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Cryin' for Me.
Song lyrics, American Ride (2009)

Smile, Way, Feeling, Hurt

“When friends are at your hearthside met,
Sweet courtesy has done its most
If you have made each guest forget
That he himself is not the host.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Source: Hospitality; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 379.

Forgetting

“My enduring feeling about René Lévesque is that if he had chosen to hang me, even as he tightened the rope round my neck, he would have complained about how humiliating it was for him to spring the trapdoor. And then, once I was swinging in the wind, he would blame my ghost for having obliged him to murder, thereby imposing a guilt trip on a sweet, self-effacing, downtrodden Francophone.”

Mordecai Richler (1931–2001) Canadian author, screenwriter and essayist

Reported in Donald Smith, D'une nation à l'autre: des deux solitudes à la cohabitation (Montreal: Éditions Alain Stanké, 1997), p. 61.
Other

Feeling, Spring

“Oh, sweet it is, where grass is deep
And swifts are overhead,
To lie and watch the clouds, and weep
For friends already dead.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Collected Poems (1990), p. 31

Lie, Grass, Dead

“Every move she made, the soft turn of her neck, the large breasts swelling under the smock, her fine hands upon the bed, the fingers spread out, these things disturbed me, a sweet painful heaviness dragging me into stupor. Then the sound of her voice, restrained, hinting of mockery, a voice that talked to my blood and bones.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Pain

“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“Man may escape from rope and gun;
Nay, some have outlived the doctor's pill:
Who takes a woman must be undone,
That basilisk is sure to kill.
The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets,
So he that tastes woman, woman, woman,
He that tastes woman, ruin meets.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Act II, sc. viii, air 26
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Flying

“Comedy is like a sweet. On auspicious occasions and during celebrations sweets are always offered. We offer a unique flavour.”

Senthil

From scratch to success, 2006-08-23 http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/06/08/stories/0908022a.htm,

“I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Indian Serenade http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_indian_serenade.html (1819), st. 1

Dreams, Star, Sleep, Night

“A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face
The lineaments of Gospell bookes.”

Mathew Roydon (1583–1622) English poet

An Elegie; or Friend's Passion for his Astrophill, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This piece was errantly ascribed to Edmund Spenser, and was printed in The Phœnix' Nest (1593), where it is anonymous. Todd has shown that it was written by Mathew Roydon.

Books

“Tears are as sweet as laughter to some natures.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Nature, Tear, Laughter

“To die to sin is to live to God, If we would God discern, the world we must despise, his love and hate must learn, see all things with His eyes to be emptied of self and detached from all that pleases or displeases, leads to the Kingdom of God; heart and desire must close to things of earth to open to God and things eternal, if we desire to taste and see that the Lord is sweet”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 124

Love, God, Hate, World

“Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you.
Georgia, oh Georgia, no peace I find…
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

Though renditions by Ray Charles are among the most popular and famous, the lyrics of "Georgia On My Mind" (1930) were written by Stuart Gorrell and the music by Hoagy Carmichael.
Misattributed

Peace, Smile, Dreams

“Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet springs with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers' wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons' time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep.”

Gene Wolfe book Gene Wolfe's Book of Days

"Forlesen", Orbit 14 (1974), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe's Book of Days (1981), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Life, Death, Men, God

“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

Edward Thomas, "Early One Morning" from Poems (1917) http://www.richmondreview.co.uk/library/thomas04.html#five <br class="br">Misattributed

Past, Dead

“There have been keen agonies, sore heart-aches, but they have been short, and a sweet peace abides. Can it be His peace? Is it possible that to such a weak, sinful creature as I, the Comforter has indeed come? I must believe this, and that it is His presence that cheers me.”

Arthur Kenney (1776–1855) Irish dean

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 446.

Peace, Heart

“Rid yourself of secular prejudice. For instance, those with the 'Women's Liberation' mentality believe that the biblical husband-wife relationship is one of a master and a well-trained dog. They couldn't be further from the truth. The Bible does not speak of women as the 'weaker vessel,' which is true physically. However, the biblical order is: as a strong thorny stem upholds the tender, easily bruised, sweet-smelling rose, so should the husband uphold, love, and respect his wife.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Love, Women, Truth, Dogs

“If I had my choice to make again - and again and again - it would be Paris, and Paris, and still Paris. And not because I thought him 'the right man', but because I felt him to be my life's task - even if I knew beforehand that this task was doomed to failure. It isn't patience and sweetness of character that does it, but love, and obstinacy - not minding how it turns out. When a woman in love thinks a lot about her future happiness, you can be sure she's not very much in love.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

Helen in A Trojan Ending (London: Constable, 1937)

Love, Life, Happiness, Failure

“In our spiritual forthbringing He useth more tenderness of keeping, without any likeness: by as much as our soul is of more price in His sight. He kindleth our understanding, He directeth our ways, He easeth our conscience, He comforteth our soul, He lighteneth our heart, and giveth us, in part, knowing and believing in His blissful Godhead, with gracious mind in His sweet Manhood and His blessed Passion, with reverent marvelling in His high, overpassing Goodness; and maketh us to love all that He loveth, for His love, and to be well-pleased with Him and all His works. And when we fall, hastily He raiseth us by His lovely calling and gracious touching. And when we be thus strengthened by His sweet working, then we with all our will choose Him, by His sweet grace, to be His servants and His lovers lastingly without end.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 61

Love, Way, Soul, Lovers

“My country, ’t is of thee,
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountain-side
Let freedom ring.”

Samuel Francis Smith (1808–1895) Protestant Christian Minister Patriotic hymn writer

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

Mountain, Freedom, Singing, Country

“Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

La molesse est doce, et sa suite est cruelle.
Attributed as a diary entry, as quoted in Respectfully Quoted : A Dictionary of Quotations (1992) by Suzy Platt

“There ’s a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.”

Charles Dibdin (1745–1814) British musician, songwriter, dramatist, novelist and actor

Poor Jack (c. 1788).

Life

“Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c’est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu’est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle. <br class="br">Speech, "Le centenaire de Voltaire" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Actes_et_paroles_-_Depuis_l%E2%80%99exil_-_1878#II_LE_CENTENAIRE_DE_VOLTAIRE, on the 100th anniversary of the death of Voltaire, Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris (30 May 1878); published in Actes et paroles - Depuis l'exil (1878)

Smile, Tear

“Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear, and fall, and miss Thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 247.

Fear, Art

“Pleasures newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To the Same Flower (the Small Celandine), st. 1 (1803).

Pleasure, Lie

“Black was this queen as jet, yet on her eyes
Sweet loveliness in black attired lies.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Bruna e si, ma il bruno il bel non toglie.
Canto XII, stanza 21 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“The assertion that “What is everybody’s business is nobody’s,” is true enough; but the assertion that “What is nobody’s business is everybody’s,” is still truer. Now, a love affair, for example, is, of all others, a thing apart--an enchanted dream, where “common griefs and cares come not.” It is like a matrimonial quarrel--never to be benefited by the interference of others: it is a sweet and subtle language, “that none understand but the speakers;” and yet this fine and delicate spirit is most especially the object of public curiosity. It is often supposed before it exists: it is taken for granted, commented upon, continued and ended, without the consent of the parties themselves; though a casual observer might suppose that they were the most interested in the business.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Dreams, Understanding, Business

“Ring them bells Sweet Martha
For the poor man's son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled with lost sheep.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Oh Mercy (1989), Ring Them Bells

God, World, Mountain

“Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills
Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,
That each dark copse and hollow overfills:”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

Beginning lines from Epochs I. Youth.

“What another being is life when we have found out our Father; and if we work, it is beneath His eye, and if we play, it is in the light and encouragement of His smile. Earth's sunshine is heaven's radiance, and the stars of night as if the beginning of the beatific vision; so soft, so sweet, so gentle, so reposeful, so almost infinite have all things become, because we have found our Father in our God.”

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 260.

Life, God, Smile, Star

“For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passeth creature’s reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man’s soul, as to my sight. Then meaneth He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for thy love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for thy love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Love, God, Pain, Soul

“Violets! — deep-blue violets!
April's loveliest coronets!
There are no flowers grow in the vale,
Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
None by the dew of the twilight wet,
So sweet as the deep-blue violet!”

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

The Violet
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Flowers

“Sweet Hope! every pleasant flower
Suns itself in thy glad power;
Every sorrow comes to thee,
Desart fount for Misery!”

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

(15th March 1823) Poetical Catalogue of Pictures. Hope, from a design by a Lady.
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Hope, Flowers, Sun

“Smooth are his words, his voice as honey sweet,
Yet war is in his heart, and dark deceit!”

Moschus Ancient Greek poet

'The Stray Cupid', tr. R. Polwhele, lines 14–15
Compare: "The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords." Psalm 55:21 (KJV)
The Idylliums of Moschus, Idyllium I

War, Heart

“[Gary] Hart was clearly the most attractive candidate, the only one with even a remote chance of beating Ronald Reagan, so naturally the Democrats selected: Walter Mondale. When Mondale accepted the nomination, he wooed the voter by informing them…that if they elected him as president, his first move would be to jack up their income taxes. Walter you sweet talker!”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Nonfiction, Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway (2001)

Nature, Chance

“It was sweet, my love, a while
To live our life beneath the grove of birch,
More sweet was it fondly to embrace
Together hid in our woodland retreat,
Together to be wandering on the ocean's shore,
Together lingering by the forest's edge,
Together to plant birches – task of joy –
Together weave fair plumage of the trees,
Together talk of love with my slim girl,
Together gaze on solitary fields.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Digrif fu, fun, un ennyd
Dwyn dan un bedwlwyn ein byd.
Cydlwynach , difyrrach fu,
Coed olochwyd, cydlechu,
Cydfyhwman marian môr,
Cydaros mewn coed oror,
Cydblannu bedw, gwaith dedwydd,
Cydblethu gweddeiddblu gwŷdd.
Cydadrodd serch â'r ferch fain,
Cydedrych caeau didrain.
"Y Serch Lledrad" (Love Kept Secret), line 23; translation from Dafydd ap Gwilym (ed. and trans. Rachel Bromwich) A Selection of Poems (Harmondsworth, Penguin, [1982] 1985) p. 34.

Love, Life, Girl, Tree

“It is long since I have known the sweets of leisure and repose; since I have known in fine, that indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing, and being nothing.”
Olim nescio quid sit otium quid quies, quid denique illud iners quidem, iucundum tamen nihil agere nihil esse.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 9, 1.
Letters, Book VIII

“I was not able to work in the several excursions and ascensions made in the neighborhood, where it was very beautiful. One is so surprised by these grand aspects that it would be necessary to remain a long time before finding the interpretation capable of rendering them. I am going to finish the season at Auvers. There is nothing like one's natural every-day surroundings where one really takes pleasure. The pictures we do then feel the effect of their home-life, and the sweet sensations we experience in it.”

Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) French painter

Quote in Daubigny's letter to his friend Frédéric Henriet, 1872; as cited in 'Charles-francois Daubigny', by Robert J. Wichenden, in The Century Illustrated Montly Magazine, Vol. XLIV, July 1892, p. 337
1860s - 1870s

Life, Pleasure, Beauty, Feeling

“Her heart and lip were music, albeit one
Who marvell'd at what her sweet self had done;
Who breathed for Love, and pined to find that Fame
In answer to her lute's soft summons came;
See, the eye droops in sadness, as to shun
That which it dared not gaze on, Glory's sun.”

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

(1825-2) Ideal Likenesses. Erinna
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Sadness, Music, Sun

“At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The House of Life

Nuptial Sleep.
The House of Life (1870—1881)

Kiss, Heart

“How gladly would I wander through some strange and savage land,
The lasso at my saddle-bow, the rifle in my hand,
A leash of gallant mastiffs bounding by my side,
And, for a friend to love, the noble horse on which I ride!
Alone, alone—yet not alone, for God is with me there,
The tender hand of Providence shall guide me everywhere,
While happy thoughts and holy hopes, as spirits calm and mild,
Shall fan with their sweet wings the hermit-hunter of the wild!”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Adventure, l. 1-8.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

Love, God, Happiness, Hope

“At first glance, My Super Sweet 16 appears to be a sugary bit of reality drizzle about some irritating American brats, but the more you watch it the more you realize it’s actually a stonehearted exposé of everything that’s wrong with our faltering so-called civilization.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

Screenwipe

Reality, Appearance

“Our Lord of His mercy sheweth us our sin and our feebleness by the sweet gracious light of Himself; for our sin is so vile and so horrible that He of His courtesy will not shew it to us but by the light of His grace and mercy.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 78

Light

“Where the abyss of his wisdom is, he will teach you what he is, and with what wondrous sweetness the loved one and the Beloved dwell one in the other, and how they penetrate each other in such a way that neither of the two distinguishes himself from the other. But they abide in one another in fruition, mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, and soul in soul, while one sweet divine nature flows through them both and being in each other they are both one and they remain completely one -- yes, and remain so forever.”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Letter IX.
Letters

Love, Wisdom, Way, Soul

“With a sweet kiss, off the glass…”

Bill Raftery (1943) American basketball player-coach and current broadcaster for college basketball

[Richard Sandomir, Crisp Analysis With a Big Helping of Onions, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/sports/ncaabasketball/26sandomir.html, March 25, 2009, 2010-03-26]

Kiss

“Religion exalts mystery as an unknowable secret that must be sealed in glass like the corpse of an enchanted princess and fearfully worshipped from afar. Initiation, on the other hand, requires direct participation and demands each of us to smash the casket and press mad lips to mystery, wooing her as a lover who will offer up her treasurers in a succession of sweet surrenders. This she will do, but only in exact ratio to our evolving ability and worthiness to receive them.”

Lon Milo DuQuette (1948) American occult writer

Source: Angels, Demons, & Gods of the New Millennium (1997), Chapter 5

Secret, Religion, Lovers, Success

“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields; —
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. —
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, —
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, —
I will pay you in the grave, —
Death will listen to your stave.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: To Jane: The Invitation (1822), l. 31

Death, Despair