Quotes

Where’s my serpent of old Nile?

The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind.

I’ll seal to such a bond, And say there is much kindness in the Jew.

The pure products of America go crazy—

Of ancient race by birth, but nobler yet In his own worth.

A morsel for a monarch.

Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O father Abram! what these Christians are, Whose own hard dealing teaches them suspect The thoughts of others.

as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth

My man of men.

Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

Made still a blund’ring kind of melody; Spurr’d boldly on, and dash’d through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.

My salad days, When I was green in judgment.

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became.

Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun.

The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit of uselessness which delights them—

We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, “Where is it?”

And the vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife.

Say it, no ideas but in things.

For every inch that is not fool is rogue.

Epicurean cooks Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.

The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Who riseth from a feast With that keen appetite that he sits down?

As the rain falls so does bathe every object of the world—