William C. Bryant Quotes

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by. As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.

I grieve for life's bright promise, just shown and then withdrawn.

Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues
That live among the clouds, and flush the air,
Lingering, and deepening at the hour of dews.

The victory of endurance born.

Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.

Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.

Do not the bright June roses blow
To meet thy kiss at morning hours?

Is not thy home among the flowers?

Or, bide thou where the poppy blows
With windflowers fail and fair.

The rugged trees are mingling Their flowery sprays in love; The ivy climbs the laurel To clasp the boughs above.

The mighty Rain
Holds the vast empire of the sky alone.

Still sweet with blossoms is the year's fresh prime.

The groves were God's first temples.

Ah! never shall the land forget.

Poetry is the eloquence of verse.

Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.

And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.

Difficulty is the nurse of greatness.

So they, who climb to wealth, forget
The friends in darker fortunes tried.
I copied them
but I regret
That I should ape the ways of pride.

All great poets have been men of great knowledge.

But 'neath yon crimson tree Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.

The little windflower, whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.

Heed not the night;
A summer lodge amid the wild is mine,
'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree,
'Tis mantled by the vine.

Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners.

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.

Maidens hearts are always soft:Would that men's were truer!

He [William Henry Harrison] did not live long enough to prove his incapacity for the office of President.

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.

These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.

Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find the perfumes thou dost bring?

Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.

Pleasantly, between the pelting showers, the sunshine gushes down.

[Thanatopsis] was written in 1817, when Bryant was 23. Had he died then, the world would have thought it had lost a great poet. But he lived on.

It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician ...

Tender pauses speak
The overflow of gladness,
When words are all too weak.

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.

And at my silent window-sill The jessamine peeps in.

I shall seeThe hour of death draw near to me,Hope, blossoming within my heart ...

The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.

Beautiful isles! beneath the sunset skies tall, silver-shafted palm-trees rise, between full orange-trees that shade the living colonade.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster - children into strength and athletic proportion.

A melancholy sound is in the air,
A deep sigh in the distance, a shrill wail
Around my dwelling. 'Tis the Wind of night.

I hear the howl of the wind that brings
The long drear storm on its heavy wings.

God hath yoked to guilt her pale tormentor,
misery.

The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.

Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.

All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.

Pain dies quickly, and lets her weary prisoners go; the fiercest agonies have shortest reign.

Eloquence is the poetry of prose.

And kind the voice and glad the eyes
That welcome my return at night.

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue ...

Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way.

All that tread, the globe are but a handful to the tribes, that slumber in its bosom.

The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep tonight.

Loveliest of lovely things are they on earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

Flowers spring up unsown and die ungathered.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

The hushed winds their Sabbath keep.

Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke.

Yet will that beauteous image make The dreary sea less drear And thy remembered smile will wake The hope that tramples fear

There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night;
And grief may hide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.

The journalist should be on his guard against publishing what is false in taste or exceptionable in morals.

Error's monstrous shapes from earth are driven
They fade, they fly
but truth survives the flight.

The gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds.

Adversity is the nurse of greatness which roughly rocks her patients back to health.