Philip james bailey quotes

The worst way to improve the world is to condemn it.

For ivy climbs the crumbling hall To decorate decay.

Life hath more awe than death.

Remember that thy heart will shed its pleasures as thine eye its tears, and both leave loathsome furrows.

He hath no power that hath not power to use.

The sole equality on earth is death.

Imagination is the air of mind.

When pride thaws, look for floods.

None but God can fill the perfect whole.

I cannot love as I have loved, And yet I know not why; It is the one great woe of life To feel all feeling die.

Art is a man's nature; nature is God's art.

Youth might be wise; we suffer less from pains than pleasures.

Every believer is God's miracle.

The worst men often give the best advice. Our deeds are sometimes better than our thoughts.

Look on the bee upon the wing 'mong flowers; How brave, how bright his life! then mark, him hiv'd, Cramp'd, cringing in his self-built, social cell, Thus it is in the world-hive; most where men Lie deep in cities as in drifts.

Respect is what we owe; love, what we give.

True faith nor biddeth nor abideth form, The bended knee, the eye uplift; is all Which men need render; all which God can bear. What to the faith are forms? A passing speck, A crow upon the sky.

For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.

Hell is more bearable than nothingness.

Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more.

The course of Nature seems a course of Death, And nothingness the whole substantial thing.

Wan night, the shadow goer, came stepping in.

It is sad To see the light of beauty wane away, Know eyes are dimming, bosoms shrivelling, feet Losing their springs, and limbs their lily roundness; But it is worse to feel the heart-spring gone, To lose hope, care not for the coming thing, And feel all things go to decay within us.

Evil and good are God's right hand and left.

Love spends his all, and still hath store.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

Any heart turned Godward feels more joyIn one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raisedBy all the feasts of earth since its foundation.

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self.

My favoured temple is an humble heart.

It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel.

Thou art a woman, And that is saying the best and worst of thee.

Naught but God Can satisfy the soul.

If all were rich, gold would be penniless.

Tis light translateth night; 'tis inspiration Expounds experience; 'tis the west explains The east; 'tis time unfolds Eternity.

Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.

The strongest passion which I have is honor.

Death is the universal salt of states; Blood is the base of all things--law and war.

America, thou half-brother of the world; with something good and bad of every land.

The world is a great poem, and the world's The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts.

I cannot be content with less than heaven.

Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.

What men call accident is God's own part.

It is much less what we do than what we think, which fits us for the future.

We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand.

The beautiful are never desolate; But some one alway loves them--God or man. If man abandons, God himself takes them.

Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.

Love is the art of hearts, and heart or arts.

Worthy books Are not companions – they are solitudes: We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.

Grief hallows hearts, even while it ages heads.

We love and live in power; it is the spirit's end. Mind must subdue; to conquer is its life.

How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!

Oh, could we lift the future's sable shroud.

I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts, Each one of which down hurls me to the ground.

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

Life's but a means unto an end, that end, Beginning, mean, and end to all things--God.

The sun, centre and sire of light, The keystone of the world-built arch of heaven.

Lowliness is the base of every virtue, And he who goes the lowest builds the safest.

Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

He is a fool who is not for love and beauty. I speak unto the young, for I am of them and always shall be.

Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.

Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell.

Where imperfection ceaseth, heaven begins.

Nature means Necessity.

Could we but think with the intensity we love with, we might do great things.

Doubt is the shadow of truth.

Sorrow is a stone that crushes a single bearer to the ground, while two are able to carry it with ease.

The wind breathes not, and the wave Walks softly as above a grave.

The value of a thought cannot be told.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses.

It matters not how long we live but how.

Life is less than nothing without love.

The poet's pen is the true divining rod Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling; Bringing to light and use, else hid from all, The many sweet clear sources which we have of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms; And marks the variations of all mind As does the needle.

The hero is the world-man, in whose heart One passion stands for all, the most indulged.

Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made his prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power,-under-makers.

We live not to ourselves, our work is life.

Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.

The ground of all great thoughts is sadness.

All things that speak of heaven speak of peace.

The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance.

Could I love less, I should be happier now.

Star canto: star speaks light, and world to world Repeats the passage of the universe To God; the name of Christ--the one great word Well worth all languages in earth or heaven.

Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which Men are and ought to be accountable,-- If not to Thee, to those they influence.

Blest is he whose heart is the home of the great dead and their great thoughts.

Dreams are rudiments Of the great state to come. We dream what is About to happen.

I cannot be content with less than heaven; Living, and comprehensive of all life. Thee, universal heaven, celestial all; Thee, sacrjd seat of intellective time; Field of the soul 's best wisdom : home of truth , Star-throned.

Not a single path Of thought I tread, but that it leads to God.

None but the brave and beautiful can love.

The heart is its own Fate.

Walk boldly and wisely.... There is a hand above that will help you on.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

The death-bed of a day, how beautiful!

Night comes, world-jewelled, . . . The stars rush forth in myriads as to wage War with the lines of Darkness; and the moon, Pale ghost of Night, comes haunting the cold earth After the sun's red sea-death--quietless.

The dew, 'Tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.

England! my country, great and free! Heart of the world, I leap to thee!

One thought settles a life, an immortality.

Error is worse than ignorance.

The long days are no happier than the short ones.

Ah, nothing comes to us too soon but sorrow.

When I forget that the stars shine in air-- When I forget that beauty is in stars-- When I forget that love with beauty is-- Will I forget thee: till then all things else.

Fulfill thy fate! Be-do-bear-and thank God.

Man is one; and he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel, with a gigantic throb athwart the sea, each other's rights and wrongs; thus are we men.

A poet not in love is out at sea; He must have a lay-figure.

Necessity, like electricity, is in ourselves and all things, and no more without us than within us.

See the sun! God's crest upon His azure shield, the Heavens.

Obey thy genius, for a minister it is unto the throne of fate. Draw to thy soul, and centralize the rays which are around of the Divinity.

The temples perish, but the God still lives.

Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can.

The goodness of the heart is shown in deeds Of peacefulness and kindness. Hand and heart Are one thing with the good, as thou should'st be. Do my words trouble thee? then treasure them, Pain overgot gives peace, as death doth Heaven. All things that speak of Heaven speak of peace.

Stars which stand as thick as dewdrops on the field of heaven.

Let us think less of men and more of God.

I am tired of looking on what is, One might as well see beauty never more, As look upon it with an empty eye. I would this world were over. I am tired.

The truth of truths is love.

Men might be better if we better deemed of them.

Joys Are bubble-like--what makes them bursts them too.

Ask not of me, love, what is love? Ask what is good of God above; Ask of the great sun what is light; Ask what is darkness of the night; Ask sin of what may be forgiven; Ask what is happiness of heaven; Ask what is folly of the crowd; Ask what is fashion of the shroud; Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss; Ask of thyself what beauty is.

Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life But needs it and may learn.

I have a heart with room for every joy .

It is fine to stand upon some lofty mountain thought, and feel the spirit stretch into a view.

The death-change comes. Death is another life. We bow our heads At going out, we think, and enter straight Another golden chamber of the king's Larger than this we leave, and lovelier. And then in shadowy glimpses, disconnect, The story, flower-like, closes thus its leaves. The will of God is all in all. He makes, Destroys, remakes, for His own pleasure, all.

Dewdrops, Nature's tears, which she Sheds in her own breast for the fair which die. The sun insists on gladness; but at night, When he is gone, poor Nature loves to weep.

There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.

Music tells no truths.

Application is the price to be paid for mental acquisition. To have the harvest, we must sow the seed.

And these are joys, like beauty, but skin deep.