Alas Quotes - Page 19

• The bright days of my youthThey were full of hopeThe great journey that was before me thenWas what was destined to be, bye bye.Now I'm sorrowful,The day is long past.Alas and woe, oh.

  Enya

  Past, Journey, Bye

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• Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.

  Flora Thompson

  Art, Ocean, Gains

  Flora Thompson (2008). “The Peverel papers: nature notes written in Liphoo, Hampshire, 1921-1927”

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• Despite history, despite English, despite the noteworthies, and a little bit also despite ourselves, alas!, the Quebecois people have stayed French. I had violently returned. This people had no need of directives to affirm its French pride in the face of the whole world

  Pierre Bourgault

  Pride, People, Needs

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• Memory is ever active, ever true. Alas, if it were only as easy to forget!

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Memories, Forget, Easy

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• The victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings by excess, and torpify all the finer by disuse and inactivity. Disgusted with this world, and indifferent about another, they at last lay violent hands upon themselves, and assume no small credit for the sang froid with which they meet death. But, alas! such beings can scarcely be said to die, for they have never truly lived.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hands, Feelings, World

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• We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Men, Rights, Forever

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• The children of the poor are so apt to look as if the rich would have been over-blest with such! Alas for the angel capabilities, interrupted so soon with care, and with after life so sadly unfulfilled.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Children, Angel, Care

  Nathaniel Parker Willis (1855). “Out-doors at Idlewild: Or, The Shaping of a Home on the Banks of the Hudson”, p.438

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• Alas! the praise given to the ear
  Ne'er was nor ne'er can be sincere.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Ears, Flattery, Praise

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• Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Reality, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.234, CUP Archive

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• Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Heaven, Soul

  Thomas Carlyle (1864). “Sartor Resartus”, p.140

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• Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

  Emma Goldman

  Art, People, Creative

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.39, 谷月社

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• Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Spring, Sunshine, Men

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1982). “Tales and Sketches”, p.833, Library of America

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• Alas! poor human nature, pity, if hard pressed, degenerates into contempt.

  John Godfrey Saxe

  Degenerates, Human Nature, Pity

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• Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.

  William Cowper

  Forgiveness, Blessing, Enemy

  William Cowper (1835). “The Works of William Cowper: The life of William Cowper. Letters, 1765-1783”

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• Oh, popular applause! what heart of man
  Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
  The wisest and the best feel urgent need
  Of all their caution in thy gentlest gales;
  But swell'd into a gust--who then, alas!
  With all his canvas set, and inexpert,
  And therefore, heedless, can withstand thy power?

  William Cowper

  Sweet, Heart, Men

  William Cowper, James Sambrook (2016). “William Cowper: The Task and Selected Other Poems”, p.100, Routledge

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• Were I to be angry at men being fools, I could here find ample room for declamation; but, alas! I have been a fool myself; and why should I be angry with them for being something so natural to every child of humanity?

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Children, Men, Humanity

  Oliver Goldsmith (1835). “His Works”, p.168

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• Alas! the joys that fortune brings
  Are trifling, and decay,
  And those who prize the trifling things,
  More trifling still than they.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Joy, Decay, Fortune

  Oliver Goldsmith (1841). “Goldsmith's miscellaneous works”, p.5

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• Now you say, alas! Christianity is hard; I grant it; but gainful and happy. I contemn the difficulty when I respect the advantage. The greatest labors that have answerable requitals are less than the least that have no regard. Believe me, when I look to the reward, I would not have the work easier. It is a good Master whom we serve, who not only pays, but gives; not after the proportion of our earnings, but of His own mercy.

  Joseph Hall

  Believe, Giving, Looks

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• It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.

  John Ruskin

  Power, Thinking, Iron

  John Ruskin, Louisa Caroline Tuthill (1858). “The true and the beautiful in nature, art, morals, and religion”, p.317

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• the more humdrum aspects of life do not make for gripping reading. To render them compelling, a writer must describe the universal in eloquent and evocative prose. Alas, Frey's writing suggests that this was not an option, and he came up with something else.

  Anna Quindlen

  Reading, Writing, Gripping

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• Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
  At cards for kisses - Cupid paid:
  He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
  His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
  Loses them too; then down he throws
  The coral of his lips, the rose
  Growing one's cheek (but none knows how);
  With these, the crystal of his brow,
  And then the dimple of his chin:
  All these did my Campaspe win.
  At last he set her both his eyes -
  She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
  O Love! has she done this for thee?
  What shall, alas! become of me?

  John Lyly

  Love, Mother, Team

  John Lyly, “Cards And Kisses”

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• Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries. One pays dear for living long.

  Hannah More

  Friends, Long, Pay

  Hannah More, Zachary Macaulay (1860). “Letters of Hannah More to Zachary Macaulay, Esq: Containing Notices of Lord Macaulay's Youth. Now First Published”, p.200

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• Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
  Or what is worse, be left by it?
  Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly,
  Oh, man! ordain'd to die?
  Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
  Thou who art under ground to lie?
  Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see,
  For death, alas! is reaping thee.

  Abraham Cowley

  Art, Lying, Men

  Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat (1826). “Prose works of Abraham Cowley ; including his essays in prose and verse”, p.217

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• But alas for the dreams that round us play! / For the plans of mortal making! / And alas for the false and fickle day / That looked so fair at waking!

  Phoebe Cary

  Dream, Disappointment, Play

  Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”

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• A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances, and to confess a conventional respectability, which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Men, Practice, Long

  "The Consequences to the Banks of the Collapse of Money Values" (1931)

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