Quotes from William Cullen Bryant

The little windflower, whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.

The Parisian has his amusements as regularly as his meals, the theatre, music, the dance, a walk in the Tuilleries, a refection in the cafe, to which ladies resort as commonly as the other sex. Perpetual business, perpetual labor, is a thing of which he seems to have no idea.

A beautiful city is Richmond, seated on the hills that overlook the James River. The dwellings have a pleasant appearance, often standing by themselves in the midst of gardens. In front of several, I saw large magnolias, their dark, glazed leaves glittering in the March sunshine.

Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find the perfumes thou dost bring?

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.

The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.

The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep tonight.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.

Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.

I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States, travelling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step.

Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.

Weep not that the world changes- did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were a cause indeed to weep.

A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.

Eternal love doth keep in his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep.

Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious, open grounds of London. I doubt, in fact, whether any person fully comprehends their extent, from any of the ordinary descriptions of them, until he has seen them or tried to walk over them.

All that tread, The globe are but a handful to the tribes, That slumber in its bosom.

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away

Love and cowardice are really the same thing.

Yet will that beauteous image make The dreary sea less drear And thy remembered smile will wake The hope that tramples fear