Quotes from Richard Chenevix Trench

Speak but little and well, if you would be esteemed as a man of merit.

None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.

Language is the close-fitting dress of thought.

There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it.

Prayer is not getting man's will done in heaven, but getting God's will done on earth. It is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of God's willingness.

We live not in our moments or our years: The present we fling from us like the rind Of some sweet future, which we after find Bitter to taste.

For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love.

Oh seize the instant time; you never will With water once passed by impel the mill.

The love of our own language, what is it, in fact, but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction?

Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name.