James Thomson Quotes

Ingratitude is treason to mankind.

The world rolls round forever like a mill; it grinds out death and life and good and ill; it has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

Surely I write not for the hopeful young,
Or those who deem their happiness of worth,
Or such as pasture and grow fat among
The shows of life and feel nor doubt nor dearth,
Or pious spirits with a God above them
To sanctify and glorify and love them,
Or sages who foresee a heaven on earth.

For none of these I write, and none of these
Could read the writing if they deigned to try;
So may they flourish, in their due degrees,
On our sweet earth and in their unplaced sky.
If any cares for the weak words here written,
It must be someone desolate, fate-smitten,
Whose hope and faith are dead, and who would die.

Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.

Health is the vital principle of bliss, and exercise, of health.

That which makes people dissatisfied with their condition, is the chimerical idea they form of the happiness of others.

I think a bishop who doesn't give offence to anyone is probably not a good bishop.

And since he cannot spend and use aright
The little time here given him in trust,
But wasteth it in weary undelight
Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and lust,
He naturally claimeth to inherit
The everlasting Future, that his merit
May have full scope; as surely is most just.

I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?

Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace.

More firm and sure the hand of courage strikes, when it obeys the watchful eye of caution.

And now at last authentic word I bring,
Witnessed by every dead and living thing;
Good tidings of great joy for you, for all:
There is no God; no Fiend with names divine
Made us and tortures us; if we must pine,
It is to satiate no Being's gall.

It was the dark delusion of a dream,
That living Person conscious and supreme,
Whom we must curse for cursing us with life;
Whom we must curse because the life he gave
Could not be buried in the quiet grave,
Could not be killed by poison or the knife.

This little life is all we must endure,
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,
We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh
In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.

We finish thus; and all our wretched race
Shall finish with its cycle, and give place
To other beings with their own time-doom:
Infinite aeons ere our kind began;
Infinite aeons after the last man
Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.

As I came through the desert, thus it was...

But who can paint like Nature? Can imagination boast, amid its gay creation, hues like hers?

For life is but a dream whose shapes return, some frequently, some seldom, some by night and some by day.