Bayard Taylor Quotes

We follow and race In shifting chase, Over the boundless ocean-space! Who hath beheld when the race begun? Who shall behold it run?

I know I am
that simplest bliss
The millions of my brothers miss.
I know the fortune to be born,
Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.

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

Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force.

The Prophet's words were true;
The mouth of Ali is the golden door
Of Wisdom."
When his friends to Ali bore
These words, he smiled and said: "And should they ask
The same until my dying day, the task
Were easy; for the stream from Wisdom's well,
Which God supplies, is inexhaustible.

He teaches best,
Who feels the hearts of all men in his breast,
And knows their strength or weakness through his own.

The Germans form one of the most important branches of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan race - a division of the human family which also includes the Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, and the Slavonic tribes.

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.

Sweeter than the stolen kiss Are the granted kisses

I cannot assume emotions I do not feel, and must describe Jerusalem as I found it. Since being here, I have read the accounts of several travellers, and in many cases the devotional rhapsodies - the ecstacies of awe and reverence - in which they indulge, strike me as forced and affected.

Pansies in soft April rains Fill their stalks with honeyed sap Drawn from Earth's prolific lap.

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

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

Life lives only in success.

The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one,
In the slow process of the doubtful years.

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 view of the Rocky Mountains from the Divide near Kiowa Creek is considered one of the finest in Colorado.

I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye - high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.

Love is better than Fame.

Who thinks, at night, that morn will ever be? Who knows, far out upon the central sea, That anywhere is land? And yet, a shore Has set behind us, and will rise before: A past foretells a future ...

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

Sometimes an hour of Fate's serenest weather Strikes through our changeful sky its coming beams; Somewhere above us, in elusive ether, Waits the fulfilment of our dearest dreams.

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

When May, with cowslip-braided locks,
Walks through the land in green attire.
And burns in meadow-grass the phlox
His torch of purple fire:
And when the punctual May arrives,
With cowslip-garland on her brow,
We know what once she gave our lives,
And cannot give us now!

I know of nothing more moving, indeed semi-tragic, than the yearning helplessness in the face of a dog, who understands what is said to him, and can not answer!

By wisdom wealth is won; but riches purchased wisdom yet for none.

Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him.

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart.

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.

In the glory which overhangs Palestine afar off, we imagine emotions which never come, when we tread the soil and walk over the hallowed sites.

Love's humility is love's true pride.

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

There may come a day
Which crowns Desire with gift, and Art with truth,
And Love with bliss, and Life with wiser youth!

Peace the offspring is of Power.

Alone each heart must cover up its dead; Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest.

Although Damascus is considered the oldest city in the world, the date of its foundation going beyond tradition, there are very few relics of antiquity in or near 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.

The bravest are the most tender; the loving are the daring.

The knowledge of my sin
Is half-repentance.

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.

The aquilegia sprinkled on the rocks
A scarlet rain; the yellow violet
Sat in the chariot of its leaves, the phlox
Held spikes of purple flame in meadows wet,
And all the streams with vernal-scented reed
Were fringed, and streaky bellow of miskodeed.

And rest, that strengthens unto virtuous deeds,
Is one with Prayer.

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

I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old

And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens, Are singing the selfsame strain.

From the desert I come to thee, On a stallion shod with fire; And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire.

To Truth's house there is a single door, which is experience.

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.

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

So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de Medici.

But still I dream that somewhere there must be
The spirit of a child that waits for me.

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.

Pens carry further than rifled cannon.

Swelling in anger or sparkling in glee.

The native Jewish families in Jerusalem, as well as those in other parts of Palestine, present a marked difference to the Jews of Europe and America. They possess the same physical characteristics - the dark, oblong eye, the prominent nose, the strongly-marked cheek and jaw - but in the latter, these traits have become harsh and coarse.

With rushing winds and gloomy skies The dark and stubborn Winter dies: Far-off, unseen, Spring faintly cries, Bidding her earliest child arise; March!

The maxims tell you to aim at perfection, which is well; but it's unattainable, all the same.

The history of Germany is not the history of a nation, but of a race. It has little unity, therefore; it is complicated, broken, and attached on all sides to the histories of other countries.

Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth
Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,
Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,
Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top.

The healing of the world is in its nameless saints. Each separate star seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars break up the night and make it beautiful.