Christopher Smart Quotes

Awake before the sun is risen, I call for my pen and papers and desk.

Thomas Gray walks as if he had fouled his small- clothes and looks as if he smelt it.

For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.

And now the matchless deed's achieved, Determined, Dared, and Done.

Too hard for any frog's digestion,To have his froghood call'd in question!

There is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest, for there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.

O guide my judgment and my taste,
Sweet Spirit, author of the book
Of wonders, told in language chaste
And plainness, not to be mistook.

O let me muse, and yet at sight
The page admire, the page believe;
"Let there be light, and there was light,
Let there be Paradise and Eve!"

Who his soul's rapture can refrain?
At Joseph's ever pleasing tale
Of marvels, the prodigious train,
To Sinai's hill from Goshen's vale.

The psalmist and proverbial seer,
And all the prophets sons of song,
Make all things precious, all things dear,
And bear the brilliant word along.

O take the book from off the shelf,
And con it meekly on thy knees;
Best panegyric on itself,
And self-avouch'd to teach and please.

Respect, adore it heart and mind.
How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand,
Who reads the most, is most refind'd,
And polish'd by the Master's hand.

For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

For EARTH which is an intelligence hath a voice and a propensity to speak in all her parts.

Thus when a barber and a collier fight, The barber beats the luckless collier-white; The dusty collier heaves his ponderous sack, And big with vengeance beats the barber-black. In comes the brick-dust man, with grime o'erspread, And beats the collier and the barber-red: Black, red, and white in various clouds are tost, And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost.