Graves Quotes - Page 27

• 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

  Sweet, Reflection, Yield

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1874). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley; Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments”, p.307

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• The low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Swings, Green, Tents

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1873). “The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.290

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• The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the filthiest word in the language. Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do - and makes you what you are - is to back up into the grave.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Retirement, Fate, Choices

  "Papa Hemingway". Book by A.E. Hotchner, pt. 3, ch.12, 1966.

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• I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero.

  Edward Thomas

  Flower, Thinking, Hands

  Thomas, Edward (2014). “The South Country”, p.80, Read Books Ltd

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• And down the dunes a thousand guns lie crouched,Unseen, beside the flood -Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouchedThat wait and watch for blood.Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,Walk grave and thoughtful men,Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's bladeAs lightly as the pen.

  Henry Timrod

  Lying, Men, Gun

  Henry Timrod, “Charleston”

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• Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;Though yet no marble column cravesThe pilgrim here to pause.Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!There is no holier spot of groundThan where defeated valor lies,By mourning beauty crowned!

  Henry Timrod

  Lying, Humble, Sleep

  Henry Timrod, “Ode:Sung On The. Occasion Of Decorating The Graves Of The Confederate Dead”

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• I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave--thank God for the quiet grave--O! I can feel the cold earth upon me--the daisies growing over me--O for this quiet--it will be my first.

  John Keats

  Death, Thank God, Growing

  In a letter from Joseph Severn to John Taylor, 6 March 1821, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 2, p. 378

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• For it is a plain fact that, most certainly in the West, the writings, works of art, musical compositions which are of central reference, comport that which is "grave and constant" (Joyce's epithets) in the mystery of our condition.

  George Steiner

  Art, Writing, Musical

  George Steiner (1991). “Real Presences”, p.224, University of Chicago Press

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• It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.

  Thomas Paine

  Lying, Men, Events

  Thomas Paine (1856). “Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution”, p.94

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• Death can only be profitable: there's no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Years, People

  "Rothschild's Violin". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1894.

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• The grave's a fine and quiet place but none I think do finish their books from there.

  Ursula Nordstrom

  Book, Thinking, Quiet

  Ursula Nordstrom, Leonard S. Marcus (1998). “Dear genius: the letters of Ursula Nordstrom”, Harpercollins

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• Ho, Ho, Sir Surgeon. You are too delicate to tell the man that he is ill. You hope to heal the sick without their knowing it. You therefore flatter them. And what happens? They laugh at you. They dance upon their own graves and at last they die. Your delicacy is cruelty, your flatteries are poisons you are a murderer. Shall we keep men in a fool's paradise? Shall we lull them into soft slumber from which they will awake in hell? Are we to become helpers of their damnation by our smooth speeches? In the name of God we will not.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Men, Names, Knowing

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• Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Love, Past, Thinking

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1868). “The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century”, p.199

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• Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. Christ in you is "the hope of glory." It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Believe, Eye, Eagles

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “ser. 1 God's revelation of heaven [and other sermons]. ser. 2 Christ's judgement respecting inheritance [and other sermons]. ser. 3 The tongue [and other sermons”, p.364

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• We are buried when we're born. The world is a place of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what happens while we wait for our appointment with the mortician.

  Dean Koontz

  Life, Waiting, World

  Dean Koontz (2014). “The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd”, p.1109, Bantam

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• It is our American habit if we find the foundations of our educational structure unsatisfactory to add another story or wing. We find it easier to add a new study or course or kind of school than to recognize existing conditions so as to meet the need. strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

  Albert Einstein

  Education, Mistake, School

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• When life is woe, and hope is dumb, the World says, "Go!" The Grave says, "Come!

  Arthur Guiterman

  Death, Dumb, World

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• Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.

  O. Henry

  Love, Girl, Heart

  O. Henry (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry (Illustrated)”, p.408, Delphi Classics

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• You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole. You must stand where you can see the man as he treads the entire path that leads from the cradle to the grave - now crossing the plain, now climbing the steeps, now passing through pleasant fields, now wending his way with difficulty between rugged rocks - tempted, tried, tested, triumphant.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Men, Rocks, Climbing

  William Jennings Bryan, Mary Baird Bryan (1900). “The Life and Speeches of Hon. Wm. Jennings Bryan”

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• To sow, that others may reap; to work and plant for those that are to occupy the earth when we are dead; to project our influences far into the future, and live beyond our time; to rule as the Kings of Thought, over men who are yet unborn; to bless with the glorious gifts of Truth and Light and Liberty those who will neither know the name of the giver, nor care in what grave his unregarded ashes repose, is the true office of a Mason and the proudest destiny of a man.

  Albert Pike

  Kings, Destiny, Men

  Albert Pike (2013). “Morals and Dogma”, p.278, Simon and Schuster

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• The grave is sooner cloy'd than men's desire.

  Francis Quarles

  Men, Desire

  Francis Quarles, William Walker Wilkins (1866). “Emblems, Divine and Moral: The School of the Heart ; And, Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man”, p.53

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• Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry.

  Quentin Crisp

  Hurt, Confused, Self

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Closing words, 1968.

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• A people's wrath voiced abroad bringeth grave Danger, no less than public curse pronounced.

  Aeschylus

  Wrath, People, Danger

  Aeschylus (2014). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides”, p.16, Everyman's Library

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• [Matrimony] is the grave of love.

  Giacomo Casanova

  Matrimony

  "The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt". Book by Giacomo Casanova, 1894.

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• A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.

  Tahir Shah

  Pain, Secret, Passionate

  Tahir Shah (2013). “Sorcerer's Apprentice paperback”, p.92, Lulu.com

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