Hands Quotes - Page 18

• every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other. That time hangs heavy on people's hands is the only explanation of the monstrous growth.

  Virginia Woolf

  People, Soul, Secret

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.499, Wordsworth Editions

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• To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Fire, Risk

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3635, Delphi Classics

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• You cannot cross the narrow bridge of art carrying all its tools in your hands. Some you must leave behind.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Bridges, Tools

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.83, Oxford University Press

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• To stand in a great bookshop crammed with books so new that their pages almost stick together, and the gilt on their backs is still fresh, has an excitement no less delightful than the old excitement of the second-hand bookstall.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Together, Pages

  Virginia Woolf (1967). “Collected essays”

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• The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hand it came.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Struggle, Heart, Men

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• Welcome, Disappointment! Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the hand of a friend. Thy voice is stern and harsh, but it is the voice of a friend. Oh, there is something sublime in calm endurance, something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of suffering without complaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes better than success!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Disappointment, Voice, Suffering

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1851). “The prose works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.155

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• When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. . . . O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Travel, Ocean, Feet

  'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'El Dorado'

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• It is graceful in a man to think and to speak with propriety, to act with deliberation, and in every occurrence of life to find out and persevere in the truth. On the other hand, to be imposed upon, to mistake, to falter, and to be deceived, is as ungraceful as to rave or to be insane.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Mistake, Men, Thinking

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1855). “Cicero's Three books of offices, or moral duties: also his Cato Major, an essay on old age; Lælius, an essay on friendship; Paradoxes; Scipio's dream; and Letter to Quintus on the duties of a magistrate”, p.48

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• A sensual and intemperate youth hands over a worn-out body to old age.
  [Lat., Libidinosa etenim et intemperans adolescentiam effoetum corpus tradit senectuti.]

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Sensual, Age, Body

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• Anger assists hands however weak.
  [Lat., Quamlibet infirmas adjuvat ira manus.]

  Ovid

  Anger, Ira, Weak

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• What is more useful than fire? Yet if any one prepares to burn a house, it is with fire that he arms his daring hands.

  Ovid

  Fire, House, Arms

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• Knowest thou not that kings have long hands?
  [Lat., An nescis longos regibus esse manus?]

  Ovid

  Kings, Long, Royalty

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• It is something to hold the scepter with a firm hand.
  [Lat., Est aliquid valida sceptra tenere manu.]

  Ovid

  Royalty, Firm

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• The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.

  Samuel Johnson

  Father, Soul, Able

  Samuel Johnson (1807). “Dr. Johnson's Table-talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners, with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Mr. Boswell's Life of Johnson”, p.50

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• The footprint of the savage traced in the sand is sufficient to attest the presence of man to the atheist who will not recognize God, whose hand is impressed upon the entire universe.

  Hugh Miller

  Atheist, Men, Atheism

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• Venerable to me is the hard hand,--crooked, coarse,--wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indispensably royal as of the sceptre of the planet.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Royal, Virtue

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• What earnest worker, with hand and brain for the benefit of his fellowmen, could desire a more pleasing recognition of his usefulness than the monument of a tree, ever growing, ever blooming, and ever bearing wholesome fruit?

  Washington Irving

  Tree, Brain, Desire

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• What feeling in all the world is so nice as that of a child's hand in yours? It is soft. It is small and warm. It is as innocent and guileless as a rabbit or a puppy or a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp.

  Marjorie Holmes

  Children, Nice, Feelings

  Marjorie Holmes (1995). “Marjorie Holmes: The Inspirational Writings: A Collection Consisting of Love and Laughter;...”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

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• The drama is not a mere copy of nature, not a facsimile. It is the free running hand of genius, under the impression of its liveliest wit or most passionate impulses, a thousand times adorning or feeling all as it goes; and you must read it, as the healthy instinct of audiences almost always does, if the critics will let them alone, with a grain of allowance, and a tendency to go away with as much of it for use as is necessary, and the rest for the luxury of laughter, pity, or poetical admiration.

  Leigh Hunt

  Running, Laughter, Drama

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• There are passages of the Bible that are soiled forever by the touches of the hands of ministers who delight in the cheap jokes they have left behind them.

  Phillips Brooks

  Forever, Delight, Ministers

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 415, 1895.

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• Stratagem is the right hand of cunning.

  George William Curtis

  Cunning, Stratagem

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• Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival; they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, "Please strike here!

  George Santayana

  Here I Am, Grace, Survival

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• Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.

  John Sterling

  Arbitrary, Superstitions, Bows

  John Sterling (1848). “Essays and Tales: Fragments from the travels of Theodore Elbert. Thoughts. Tales and apologues”, p.128

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• Hand
  Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
  And great hearts expand
  And grow one in the sense of this world's life.

  Robert Browning

  Friendship, Eye, Heart

  Robert Browning, Robert Morse Lovett (2009). “Selections from Robert Browning”, p.159, Wildside Press LLC

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• God smiles as He has always smiled;
  Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
  Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled
  The Heavens, God thought on me His child;
  Ordained a life for me, arrayed
  Its circumstances, every one
  To the minutest; ay, God said
  This head this hand should rest upon
  Thus, ere He fashioned star or sun.

  Robert Browning

  Stars, Children, Moon

  Robert Browning (2013). “MEN AND WOMEN Songs of love and life”, p.47, Lulu.com

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