Quotes from Bayard Taylor

I study hard at Russian, which is a tough but most attractive language.

An enthusiastic desire of visiting the Old World haunted me from early childhood. I cherished a presentiment, amounting almost to belief, that I should one day behold the scenes, among which my fancy had so long wandered.

I came to Berlin not to visit its museums and galleries, its operas, its theaters... but for the sake of seeing and speaking with the world's greatest living man - Alexander von Humboldt.

As I toiled up the Mount of Olives, in the very footsteps of Christ, panting with the heat and the difficult ascent, I found it utterly impossible to conceive that the Deity, in human form, had walked there before me.

My duty is that of a chronicler; and if I perform that conscientiously, the lessons which my observations suggest will need no pointing out.

The original home of the Aryan race appears to have been somewhere among the mountains and lofty table-lands of Central Asia. The word 'Arya,' meaning the high or the excellent, indicates their superiority over the neighboring races long before the beginning of history.

Now the frosty stars are gone: I have watched them one by one Fading on the shores of Dawn. Round and full the glorious sun Walks with level step the spray Through his vestibule of Day.

Death is not rare, alas! nor burials few, And soon the grassy coverlet of God Spreads equal green above their ashes pale.

Oh! what waves of crime and bloodshed have swept like the waves of a deluge down the valley of the Rhine! War has laid his mailed hand on those desolate towers and ruthlessly torn down what time has spared, yet he could not mar the beauty of the shore, nor could Time himself hurl down the mountains that guard it.

The Swedish language combines the strong manhood of the German with the delicate beauty of the Italian.

Labor, you know, is prayer.

The knowledge of my sin Is half-repentance.

To learn by observation is traveling, people must also bring knowledge with them.

Learn to live, and live to learn, Ignorance like a fire doth burn, Little tasks make large return.

Poetry had great powers over me from my childhood, and today the poems live in my memory which I read at the age of 7 or 8 years and which drove me to desperate attempts at imitation.

Fame is what you have taken, character is what you give; when to this truth you waken then you begin to live.

There is a degree of confidence exhibited towards strangers in Sweden, especially in hotels, at post-stations, and on board the inland steamers, which tells well for the general honesty of the people.

I could never see a book written in a foreign language without the most ardent desire to read it.

Melrose is the finest remaining specimen of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Some of the sculptured flowers in the cloister arches are remarkably beautiful and delicate, and the two windows - the south and east oriels - are of a lightness and grace of execution really surprising.

A Pike, in the California dialect, is a native of Missouri, Arkansas, Northern Texas, or Southern Illinois. The first emigrants that came over the plains were from Pike County, Missouri; but as the phrase, 'a Pike County man,' was altogether too long for this short life of ours, it was soon abbreviated into 'a Pike.'

Life lives only in success.

London has the advantage of one of the most gloomy atmospheres in the world.

Walking at random through the streets, we came by chance upon the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I shall long remember my first impression of the scene within. The lofty gothic ceiling arched far above my head and through the stained windows the light came but dimly - it was all still, solemn and religious.

True, when you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless forest of palms within the tropics.