Anna Letitia Barbauld Quotes - Page 2

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.

we should contract our ideas of education, and expect no more from it than it is able to perform.

Eternity.—Thy name Or glad, or fearful, we pronounce, as thoughts Wandering in darkness shape thee. Thou strange being, Which art and must be, yet which contradict'st All sense, all reasoning,—thou, who never wast Less than thyself, and who still art thyself Entire, though the deep draught which Time has taken Equals thy present store—No line can reach To thy unfathomed depths. The reasoning sage Who can dissect a sunbeam, count the stars, And measure distant worlds, is here a child, And, humbled, drops his calculating pen.

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.

The first pale blossom of the unripened year.

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?

We may think all religions beneficial, and believe of one alone that it is true.

Forgotten rimes, and college themes, Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes; A mass of heterogeneous matter. A chaos dark, nor land nor water.

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

Of her scorn the maid repented, And the shepherd - of his love.

And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson must By Time's slow finger written in the dust.

When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; when man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!

Say not 'Good-night' but in some brighter clime, bid me 'Good-morning.'

if an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect.