Sigh Quotes - Page 19

• For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.

  Walter Scott

  Royalty, Vain, Monarchy

  Sir Walter Scott, J. W. Lake (1848). “The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott: with a sketch of his life”, p.83

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• How does Love speak? In the faint flush upon the telltale cheek, And in the pallor that succeeds it; by The quivering lid of an averted eye-- The smile that proves the parent to a sigh Thus doth Love speak.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Love, Eye, Parent

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.675, Delphi Classics

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• Why should we faint and fear to live alone,Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die?Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.

  John Keble

  Heart, Heaven, Solitude

  John Keble (1874). “The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays Throughout the Year”, p.185

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• I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in the eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing yes, I'm growing old!

  John Godfrey Saxe

  Wise, Eye, Laughing

  John Godfrey Saxe (1860). “The Money-king: And Other Poems”, p.34

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• My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

  Robert Southwell

  Blow, Love Is, Men

  Robert Southwell (1856). “Poetical Works”, p.98

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• Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.

  Mark Akenside

  Grace, Mind, Different

  Mark Akenside (1744). “The Pleasures of Imagination: A Poem in Three Books”, p.136

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• Gather a shell from the strewn beach
  And listen at its lips: they sigh
  The same desire and mystery,
  The echo of the whole sea's speech.

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Beach, Echoes, Sea

  "The Sea-Limits". "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition", 1919.

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• The shy little Mayflower weaves her nest, But the south wind sighs o'er the fragrant loam, And betrays the path to her woodland home.

  Sarah Helen Whitman

  Home, Wind, Shy

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• Reviving Spring, a toast to thy fresh lips! Thy blush is music, and e'en heaven lurks In thy thick perfumed hair that hangs about Thy flowered shoulders like enchanted rain; Thy sigh is song and thy soft breath a balm, Dispelling death -- soft loosing his cold grip, Unravelling darkness in the heart of pain, As o'er dank waters rings the laugh of dawn.

  William Batchelder Greene

  Song, Pain, Spring

  William Batchelder Greene (1888). “Cloudrifts at Twilight”

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• There whil'st the world prov'd prodigal of breath, the headless trunks lay prostrated in heaps; this field of funerals sacred unto death, did paint out horror in most hideous shapes: whil'st men unhors'd, horses unmast'red, stray'd, some call'd on those whom they most dearly lov'd, some rag'd, some groan'd, some sigh'd, roar'd, promis'd, pray'd, as blows, falls, faintness, pain, hope, anguish mov'd.

  William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling

  Horse, Pain, War

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• Our yesterdays Are like a lonely and a ruined land Wherein a breeze of recollection sighs-- A fading land to which is no return.

  Henry Abbey

  Lonely, Past, Land

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• I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Garden, Lovely, Magic

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• Once a pallid Vestal Doubted truth in blue; Listed red in ruin, Harried every hue; Barricaded vision, Garbed herself in sighs; Ridiculed the birthmarks Of the butterflies.

  Nathalia Crane

  Butterfly, Blue, Vision

  Nathalia Crane (1925). “The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems”

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• The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.

  Nathalia Crane

  Running, Eye, Circles

  Nathalia Crane (1925). “The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems”

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• In the name of sense, man, if God made fish to be eaten, what difference does it make if I enjoy the killing of them before I eat them? You would have none but a fisherman by trade do it, and then you would have him utter a sigh, a prayer, and a pious ejaculation at each cod or haddock that he killed.

  William Cowper Prime

  Prayer, Men, Differences

  William Cowper Prime (1876). “I Go A-fishing”, p.266

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• Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly, and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, 'Where is that marvelous ape?'

  John McCain

  Doctors, Trying, Gorillas

  "McCain Ape Rape Joke Recalled By Sources" by Sam Stein, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 23, 2008.

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• Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Love, Gay, Expression

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• On rolls the stream with a perpetual sigh;
  The rocks moan wildly as it passes by;
  Hyssop and wormwood border all the strand,
  And not a flower adorns the dreary land.

  William C. Bryant

  Flower, Rocks, Land

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• the various earth odors all have a separate tale to tell, and the leaf mold of the woods bears a wholly different fragrance from that of the soil under pasture turf, or the breath that the garden gives off in great sighs of relief when it is relaxed and refreshed by a summer shower.

  Mabel Osgood Wright

  Summer, Nature, Garden

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• For each of us has a perch on the tree. After we are gone, that perch is marked by a notch, permanent, yes, but with its edges muting over time, assuming the tree is ever growing. Years from now someone can see that you were here, or there, and although you had little conception or care for the wider branching, in the next life there might be a sigh of wonder at how quietly flourishing it all was, if never majestic.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Years, Tree, Littles

  Chang-rae Lee (2014). “On Such a Full Sea: A Novel”, p.66, Penguin

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• Love is like a butterfly
  As soft and gentle as a sigh
  The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings
  Love makes your heart feel strange inside
  It flutters like soft wings in flight
  Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.

  Dolly Parton

  Heart, Butterfly, Love Is

  Song: Love Is Like A Butterfly

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• If I dont get at least one e-mail every ten minutes, I feel unloved. Even junk mail makes me feel seen. Sad, I know. Sigh.

  Chris Abani

  Junk, Mail, Minutes

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• There's a gentle sigh which descends like billowing silk upon the soul that accepts its coming death. It's a gentle pocket of air in the turbulence of everyday life... the silk settles around you as if it has been drifting towards the earth forever and has finally found it's target. The flag of defeat has been mercifully dropped and, in this action, the loss is not so bad. Defeat itself is defeated by the embrace of defeat, and death is swallowed up in victory.

  Andrew Davidson

  Loss, Air, Forever

  Andrew Davidson (2008). “The Gargoyle”, p.48, Canongate Books

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• Then, at the end of every hand, Miss Bolo would inquire with a dismal countenance and reproachful sigh, why Mr. Pickwick had not returned that diamond, or led the club, or roughed the spade, or finessed the heart, or led through the honour, or brought out the ace, or played up to the king, or some such thing; and in reply to all these grave charges, Mr. Pickwick would be wholly unable to plead any justification whatever, having by this time forgotten all about the game.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Kings, Humorous

  Charles Dickens (1870). “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.312

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• I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
  For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
  And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
  With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dream, Lost Love, Fall

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.186, Hayes Barton Press

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