“Words are like stories, don’t you think, Mr. Sweatman? They change as they are passed from mouth to mouth; their meanings stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said. The Dictionary can’t possibly capture every variation, especially since so many have never been written down -”
Esme to Mr. Sweatman, in The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams
Tag: Quick Quotes (Page 3 of 10)
“Words change over time, you see. The way they look, the way they sound; sometimes even their meaning changes. They have their own history.”
Da to Esme, in The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams
“Never forget that, Esme. Words are our tools of resurrection.”
Aunt Ditte to Esme, in The Dictionary of Lost Words, BY Pip Williams
“And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler,
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.”
Henry Waldsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
“Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,
Henry Waldsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o’er the water,
Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music,
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
Plaintive at first were the tones, and sad; then soaring to madness
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes.
Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation;
Till, having gathered them all, he hung them abroad in derision,
As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches.”
“Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor,
Said, with a smile, “O daughter! thy God thus speaketh within thee!
Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain,
Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection!
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.
Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!”
Father Felician to Evangeline, in Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A fairer reading of Longfellow’s work, however, would be this: Hiawatha was a one-time experiment for him, not to be taken as the quintessence of his muse but as one among other occasional attempts to extend his treatment of American life beyond the regional and cultural boundaries he knew best… Although his experiment failed by any exacting standard, at least it was vigorous enough to establish itself, along with James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, ahead of the thousand of other contemporary literary evocations of Indian life.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
“Longfellow was one of the greatest of all promoters of the arts. Ninety percent of all the poems he ever wrote contained some favorable reference to poetry, poets, artists, art, scholars, or literature. Bards are sublime, grand, immortal; singers are sweet; songs are beautiful; art is wondrous; books are household treasures. Hans Sachs is remembered after kaisers are forgotten. Micheal Angelo is impudent to cardinals. John Alden, the scholar, wins out over Miles Standish, the man of action.”
William Charvat, as quoted by Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
“Longfellow continually writes about disappointed hopes, the need to accommodate oneself to diminished expectations, and the pressures of coping with the fear that the reality of social or personal chaos is more than we can bear.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
“In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life and toil of effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires more easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”
spoken by Theodore Roosevelt April 10, 1899 in Chicago before the Hamilton Club, as quoted in Lion in the White House by Aida D. Donald
Hi! I'm Cadie. Welcome to my Collection of Bookish Thoughts where I will share with you everything I love about books.