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day quotes

  • A good rider may often be thrown from his horse, And climb on once again to face forward his course, Which is how I went forward myself on my way, And come,Christ, and give me my true judgment day.

    -Anonymous
    c TraditionalIrish poem. Translatedby Owen Dudley Edwards.

  • Far away from where I am now there is a little gap in the hills, and beyond it the sea; and 'tis there I do be looking the whole day long, for it's the nearest thing to yourself that I can see.

    -Anonymous
    c.1900  Letter from an unidentified Irish postboy to his beloved, quoted in Maurice Healy  The Old Munster Circuit.

  • Went the day well?

    -Anonymous
    Title of an anthology of tributes to men and women killed in the war, used for the title of Cavalcanti's1942 film about German soldiers invading an English village.

  • I know one thing we did right Was the day we started to fight, Keep your eye on the prize, Hold on, hold on!

    -Anonymous
    Civil rights song, quoted in  Juan Williams Eye on the Prize (1987).

  •    Chacun de nous a un jour, plus ou moins triste, plus ou moins lointain, o  u' il doit enfin accepter d'e"  tre un homme. There will come a day for each of us, more or less sad, more or less distant, whenwe must accept the condition of being human.

    -Jean Anouilh
      Antigone.

  • An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

    -Anonymous
    Proverb.

  • Nous voulons tous louer a'   l'anne  e et nous ne pouvons jamais louer que pour une semaine ou pour unjour. C'est l'image de la vie. Wewould all liketo leaseforayearand we canonly lease for a week or from day to day. That is the image of life.

    -Jean Anouilh
      Le Rendez-vous de Senlis, act1.

  • Human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence, and if there is more than one sort of excellence, in accordance with the best and most complete.Foroneswallowdoesnot makea summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

    -Aristotle
    Nicomachean Ethics, bk.1, ch.7,1098 (translated by Sir David Ross).

  •    Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'Longing' (later published as 'Faded Leaves' in Poems: Second Series,1855).

  • All the live murmur of a summer's day.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.20.

  • The stars are dead. The animals will not look: We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      Spain.

  •    O all the instruments agree The day of his death was a dark cold day.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.1.

  • To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, neverapathetic, neverattitudinizinghere isperfection of character.

    -Aung San Suu Kyi
    c.  AD 170^180  Meditations, bk.7, no.69 (translated by M Staniforth).

  • The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, The channerin' worm doth chide.

    -Ballads
    'The Wife of Usher's Well'.

  • La mort, mon fils, est un bien pour tous les hommes; elle est la nuit de ce jour inquiet qu'on appelle la vie. Bernstein Death, my son, is a good for all; it is the night of this worrisome day that one calls life.

    -Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
      Paul et Virginie.

  • And God called the light Dayand the darkness he called Night. And the evening and morning were the first day.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Genesis1:5.

  • Iwill not againcursetheground anymore for man'ssake; for the imagination of man is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Genesis 8:21^2.

  • And the L went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDExodus13:21.

  • Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said,There is a man child conceived.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 3:3.

  • For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job19:25^6.

  • For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 84:10.

  • The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the L's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lhath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDORD Psalms118:22^4.

  •    Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If Isay, Surely the darknessshall cover me; even thenight shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms139:7^12.

  • Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs 27:1.

  • For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; Daniel and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the L of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.But untoyou that fear my nameshall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDMalachi 4:1^2.

  • The first day of the weekcometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St  John 20:1.

  • For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now istheaccepted time; behold, now isthe dayof salvation.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians 6:2.

  • I know whom Ihave believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
      Timothy1:12.

  • One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Peter 3:8^9.

  • But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Peter 3:10^11.

  • And said to the mountains and rocks,Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his 126 wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 6:16^17.

  • God appears and God is light To those poor souls who dwell in night, But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day.

    -William Blake
      Milton,'And Did Those Feet In  Ancient Time'.

  • When you come to the end of a perfect day, And you sit alone with your thought, While the chimes ring out with a carol gay For the joy that the day has brought, Do you think what the end of a perfect day Can mean to a tired heart, When the sun goes down with a flaming ray, And the dear friends have to part?

    - CarrieJacobs Bond
      'A Perfect Day'.

  • The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handywork.One day telleth another: and one night certifieth another. There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them. Their sound isgone out into all lands: and their words into the ends of the world.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Psalm19:1^4.

  •    There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things: there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?

    - George Henry Borrow
    Lavengro, ch.25.

  • If you go down in the woods today You're sure of a big surprise If you down in the woods today You'd better go in disguise. For every Bear that ever there was Will gather there for certain because, Today's the day theTeddy Bears have their Picnic.

    -JohnW Bratton
      'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' (with  James B Kennedy).

  •    We are na fou, we're nae that fou, But just a drappie in our e'e; The cock may craw, the day may daw, And ay we'll taste the barley bree.

    - Robert Burns
      'Willie brew'd a peck o' maut', chorus.

  • Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lour; See approach proud Edward's power, Chains and Slaverie!

    - Robert Burns
      'Bruce's  Address at Bannockburn', stanza1.

  • The moon is up, and yet it is not night; Sunset divides the sky with hera sea Of glory streams along the Alpine height Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free From clouds, but of all colours seems to be Melted to one vast Iris of the West, Where the day joins the past eternity.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza 27.

  • She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

    -Rochdale
      'She Walks in Beauty'.

  • For I have seyn of a ful misty morwe Folowen ful ofte a myrie someris day.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
    c.1385  Troilus and Criseyde, bk.3, l.1060^1.

  • The bisy larke, messager of day.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
      Canterbury  Tales,'The Knight's Tale', l.1491.

  • My young love said to me,'My brothers won't mind, And my parents won't slight you for your lack of kind.' Then she stepped away from me, and this she did say, 'It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.'

    - Padraic Colum
      Wild Earth,'She Moved through the Fair'.

  • The party's over, it's time to call it a day.

    - Betty pseudonym of  Elizabeth Cohen Comden
      'The Party's Over' (with  Adolphe Green, music by Jule Styne).

  • Not a penny off the pay; not a second on the day.

    - ArthurJames Cook
      Miners'strike slogan, coined in a speech, 3  Apr. It is often rendered 'not a minute on the day'.

  • Tous les jours, a'   tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

    - EŁ  mile Coue 
      De la suggestion et de ses applications. Maxim recommended by Coue   to his patients, to be repeated several times over on rising and on going to bed.

  • The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day.

    - (Harold) Hart Crane
      'The Broken Tower', in the New Republic, 8  Jun.

  • Wellcome, all Wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span. Summer in Winter, Day in Night. Heaven in Earth and God in Man.

    - Richard Crashaw
      'Hymn of the Nativity' (published1652), l.79.

  • Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

    - Samuel Daniel
      Delia, sonnet 54.

  • When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.

    - Bernard DeVoto
    The Hour.

  • 'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'Nocturnal upon St Lucy's Day', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • So to engraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation. And whilst our souls negotiate there, We like sepulchral statues lay; All day, the same our postures were, And we said nothing all the day.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'The Ecstasy', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he canbring thysummerout of winter, though thou have no spring† God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noontoillustrateall shadows,asthesheavesinharvestto fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

    -John Donne
      Sermons,'Christmas Day,1624'.

  • All the four Monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful Kings and all the beautiful Queens ofthis world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, all in one morning, in respect to this day.

    -John Donne
      On eternity. Sermon, 30  Apr.

  • And all small fowlys singis on the spray: Welcum the lord of lycht and lamp of day.

    - Gavin Douglas
    c.1513  Eneados, bk.12, prologue. English poet.  Only  one  volume  of  his  poems  was  published in his lifetime,  and he was  killed in action  shortly  after  the D-Day landings in Normandy.

  • The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

    -John Dryden
      MacFlecknoe (published1682), l.19^24.

  • Joy ruled the day, and Love the night.

    -John Dryden
      The Secular Masque, l.81.

  • Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'Ash Wednesday'.

  • Time and the bell have buried the day, The black cloud carries the sun away.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'Burnt Norton', pt.4.

  • The dayThou gavest, Lord, is ended, The darkness falls at Thy behest.

    -John Ellerton
      A Liturgy for Missionary Meetings,'The Day Thou Gavest'.

  • He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
      Society and Solitude,'Courage'.

  •    Regard this day's life as yours, but all else as Fortune's.

    -Euripides
    Alcestis, l.788^9 (translated by D Kovacs,1994).

  • And wealth abides not, it is but for a day.

    -Euripides
    Phoenissae, l.558.

  • On the Last Day the wrecks will surface over the sea.

    - Gavin Buchanan Ewart
      'Resurrection'.

  •    We agreed that the novel is absolutely the only vehicle for the thought of our day.

    - Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer Ford
      Joseph Conrad,  a Personal Remembrance, pt.3.

  • Gwine to run all night, Gwine to run all day, I'll bet my money on de bob-tail nag, Somebody bet on de bay.

    - Stephen Collins Foster
      'Camptown Races', chorus.

  • Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react on others from the outside inwards.

    - Caspar David Friedrich
    Quoted in Caspar David Friedrich1774^1840, Tate Gallery (1972).

  • The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscapes on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.1^8.

  • For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.85^8.

  • At one withthe One, it didn't meana thing besidea glass of Guinness on a sunny day.

    - (Henry) Graham Greene
      Brighton Rock, pt.1, ch.1.

  • This is the last day of1943, a year to be said goodbye to without regret, holding as it did nothing beyond captivity and depression, weary waiting, and above all the sight of immeasurable human misery, suffering and death.

    - Robert Hardie
      Diary entry, 31 Dec.

  • Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed fromthe one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair.

    -Thomas Hardy
      'The Voice'.

  • I got me flowers to strewThy way, I got me boughs off many a tree; But Thou wast up by break of day, And brought'st Thy sweets along withThee.

    - George Herbert
    'Easter Song', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

  • Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky: The dew shall weep thy fall tonight, For thou must die.

    - George Herbert
    'Virtue', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

  • Augustus was a chubby lad; Fat, ruddy cheeks Augustus had: And everybody saw with joy The plump and hearty, healthy boy. He ate and drank as he was told, And never let his soup get cold. But one day, one cold winter's day, He screamed out,'Take the soup away! O take the nasty soup away! I won't have any soup today.'

    - Heinrich Hoffmann
      Struwwelpeter,'Augustus'.

  • I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!

    -Honorius of Autun
      'I Remember'.

  • No sunno moon! No mornno noon No dawnno duskno proper time of day.

    -Honorius of Autun
      'No'.

  • Carpe diem. Seize the day.

    -Horace full name  Quintus Horatius Flaccus   65
    Odes, bk.1, no.11, l.8.

  • These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      Last Poems, no.37,'Epitaph on an  Army of Mercenaries'.

  • Change proves true on the day it is finished.

    -I Ching   c.2000
    c.2000  BC  I Ching, no.49 (translated by Thomas Cleary).

  • Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, Nov. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

  • Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!

    - Ben Jonson
      Volpone, act1, sc.1.

  • There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and women to fill our day; But when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The Power of the Dog'.

  •    Art islike Creation: it holdsgood onthelast dayas onthe first.

    - Paul Klee
      The Diaries of Paul Klee1898^1918, entry1008.

  • Go out on the front porch of the house, turn the Washington Post over with your big toe, and if your name's above the fold, you know you're not going to have a good day.

    - Bert Lance
      Of the Bert Lance Toe Test which he devised for his nine months in the Carter administration. In the Washington Post, 6 Oct. US  newspaper  columnist  and 'agony  aunt',  who  offered  advice and information on  topics  such  as  family  life,  marriage,  social issues and health.

  • Be of good comfort Master Ridley, and play the man.We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as (I trust) shall never be put out.

    - Hugh Latimer
      Spoken to Nicholas Ridley, as they waited together to be burned at the stake,16 Oct. Quoted in Foxe Acts and Monuments (1563).

  • After the funeral, my father struggled through half a page, and it might as well have been Hottentott. 'And what dun they gi'e thee for that, lad?' 'Fifty pounds, father.' 'Fifty pounds!' He was dumbfounded, and looked at mewith shrewd eyes,asif I were a swindler.'Fifty pounds! An'tha's niver done a day's hard work in thy life.'

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      Preface to Edward D McDonald (ed)  A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence.

  • All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night inthe dusty recesses of their mindswake inthe day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the dayare dangerous men, for they mayact their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

    -Arabia
      Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, introductory chapter.

  • I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.

    - Stephen Butler Leacock
      Literary Lapses,'Insurance Up to Date'.

  • Pussy said to the Owl,'You elegant Fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?' They sailed away for a year and a day, To the land where the Bong-tree grows, And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose.

    - Edward Lear
    Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat'.

  • The day consists of twenty-four hours only. This regulates the size of the house and the ro"  le it has to fulfil. For the twenty-four hour day is short, and our acts and thoughts are spurred on by time. If we were taught to regard the hand of the clock as a beneficent but implacable god, we should order our lives more rationally.

    -Le Corbusier pseudonym of  Charles EŁ  douard Jeanneret
      'Twentieth-century living and twentieth-century building'. Collected in Dennis Sharp (ed)  The Rationalists: Theory and Design in the Modern Movement (1978).

  • It's been a hard day's night, And I've been working like a dog.

    -Paul
      'A Hard Day's Night'.

  • Those little eyes so helpless and appealing One day will flash and send you crashing through the ceiling.

    - AlanJay Lerner
      'Thank Heaven for Little Girls', in the musical Gigi (music by Frederick Loewe).

  •    Then down came the lidthe day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo.World-politics stepped in, and a war was started whichhasnot ended yet: 'a war to end war'.But it merely ended art. It did not end war.

    -Jose Lezama Lima
      Blasting and Bombardiering, pt.5,'Toward an  Art-Less Society'.

  • The news of the dayas it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. For the newspaper isinall literalnessthebibleofdemocracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.

    -Walter Lippmann
      Liberty and the News,'What Modern Liberty Means'.

  • And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold up their tents like Arabs, And as silently steal away. See Kaufman 455:57.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      The Waif,'The Day Is Done', stanza11.

  • Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'The Children's Hour', stanza1.

  • We call the heroes of the past heroes of production.We feel entitled to call the present day magazine heroes 'idols ofconsumption'.Indeed, almosteveryoneofthem is directly, or indirectly, related to the sphere of leisure time.

    - Leo Lowenthal
      'The Triumph of Mass Idols', collected in Literature and Mass Culture (1984).

  • Dark and terrible beyond any season within my remembrance of political affairs was the day of their flight.Far darkerand moreterrible will be the dayof their return.

    -1st Baron
    On the defeat of the Tory Government, House of Commons, 20 Sep.

  • So bye, bye, Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levee But the levee was dry. Them good old boys was drinkin' whiskeyand rye Singin' 'This'll be the day that I die.'

    - Don McLean
      'American Pie'.

  • For the last blossom is the first blossom And the first blossom is the best blossom And when from Eden we take our way The morning after is the first day.

    - (Frederick) Louis MacNeice
    'Apple Blossom', in Collected Poems,1966.

  • Is it not possible that the rage for confession, autobiography, especially for memories of earliest childhood, is explained by our persistent yet mysterious belief in a self which is continuous and permanent; which, untouched by all we acquire and all we shed, pushes a green spear through the dead leaves and throughthemould, thrusts a scaled bud through years of darkness until, one day, the light discovers it and shakes the flower free andwe are alivewe are flowering for our moment upon the earth? This is the moment which after all, we live forthe moment of direct feeling when we are most ourselves and least personal.

    -Beauchamp
       Journal entry,  Apr.

  • If there was onething he hated more than another it was the way she had of waking him in the morning† It was her way of establishing her grievance for the day.

    -Beauchamp
      Bliss and Other Stories,'Mr Reginald Peacock's Day'.

  •    Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature's eye, rise, rise, again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but Ayear, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I'll leap up to my God!Who pulls me down? See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah, my Christ.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 5, sc.2.

  • But what are kings, when regiment isgone, But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1591 Edward II (published1594), act 5, sc.1.

  • Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness Lady were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges'side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'To His Coy Mistress' (published1681).

  •    How few the days are that hold the mind in place; like a tapestry hanging on four or five hooks. Especially the day you stop becoming; the day you merelyare. I suppose it's when the principles dissolve, and instead of the general gray of what ought to be you begin to see what is† The word 'Now' is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.

    - Arthur Miller
      Quentin.  After the Fall, act1.

  • There in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring And such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.139^46.

  • Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse contemplation She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffl'd, and sometimes impair'd. He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i'the centre, and enjoy bright day, But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun; Himself is his own dungeon.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.372^83.

  • But O as to embrace me she enclin'd I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

    -John Milton
    c.1658  Sonnets, no.19,'Methought I Saw'.

  • Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, of human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works to me expunged and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.3, l.40^50.

  • But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity; ay me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head; both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Paradise Lost Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; O were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!

    -John Milton
       Adam muses on death. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.10, l.808^20.

  • The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world.

    -John Milton
    Paradise Regained, bk.4, l.220^3.

  •    Tomorrow, I'll think of some other way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

    - Margaret Mitchell
      Scarlett O'Hara's final words. Gone  with  the Wind, ch.63.

  •    Speakingofthe coldness ofoneparticularday, a genuine brother Jonathan remarked, with charming simplicity, that it was thirtydegrees below zero that morning, and it would have been much colder if the thermometer had been longer.

    - Susanna ne  e Strickland Moodie
      'BrotherJonathan'refers to a typical Yankee. Roughing It in the Bush; or,  A Life in Canada, vol.2, ch.9,'The Fire'.

  • It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.

    -Jo Moore
    E-mail sent on11 Sep, after hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center in New York.

  • One foot in Eden still, I stand And look across the other land. The world's great day isgrowing late, Yet strange these fields that we have planted So long with crops of love and hate.

    - Edwin Muir
      One Foot in Eden,'One Foot in Eden'.

  • Better one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.

    - Benito also called Il Duce [the Leader] Mussolini
    c.1930  Quoted in Denis Mack-Smith Mussolini's Roman Empire (1976), p.47.

  • One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten byan alligator. ProfessorTwist could not but smile. 'You mean,' he said,'a crocodile.'

    - (Frederic) Ogden Nash
      The Face Is Familiar,'The Purist'.

  • If I be evil intreated, or sent away with a flea in mine ear, let him look that Iwill rail onhimsoundly; nor foranhour or a day, whiles the injury is fresh in my memory; but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to all ages of his beggarly parsimony and ignoble illiberality.

    -Thomas Nashe
      Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil, 'An Invective Against Enemies of Poetry'.

  • Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore: So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish, less than in a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear.

    -Thomas Nashe
      Summer's Last Will and Testament,'Song'.

  • May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

    -John Henry Newman
      'Wisdom and Innocence', collected in Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day.

  • Today, children,Iam going totell you about thehistoryof Mr.Blackmaninthreesentences.Inthebeginning hehad the land and the mind and the soul together.On the secondday, they took thebodyaway tobarter itforsilver coins.On the third day, seeing that he was still fighting back, they brought priests and educators to bind his mind and soul so that these foreigners could more easily take his land and produce.

    -Ngu‹ u g|‹   waThiong'o originally James Nguu‹  g|‹
      Petals of Blood, ch.8.

  •    Und, alles in allem und groÞem: ich will irgendwann einmal nur noch ein Jasagender sein! And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only aYes-sayer.

    - FriedrichWilhelm Nietzsche
      Die fro«  hliche Wissenschaft ( The Gay Science), section 276 (translated by W Kaufmann).

  • Life is perhaps most wisely regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings, and every day is a life in miniature.

    - Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
      Chu-Yin. Marco Millions, act 2, sc.2.

  • For thefuture I cease,Deathapproaches with little delay, Since the dragons of Laune and Lane and Lee are destroyed; I'll follow the heroes far from the light of day, The princes myancestors followed before Christ died.

    - Egan Gaelic name  Aodhaga  n OŁ   Rathaille O'Rahilly
    c.1729  Closing lines of his last known poem, translated from the Irish by Owen Dudley Edwards.

  • 'O say, Shall we no voluntary bars Set to our drift? I, Sister of the Stars, And Thou, my glorious, course-compelling Day!'

    - Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
      To the Unknown Eros, bk.2, no.2,'The Contract'.

  • As Einstein once said, ordinary life in an ordinary day in the modern world is a dreary business. I mean dreary. People will do anything just to escape this dreariness.

    - Samuel Pepys
      Interview in Esquire, Dec.

  •    On this twelfth day of my diet I would rather die satiated than slim.

    - Marge Piercy
      Stone, Paper, Knife,'On Mental Corsets'.

  • We cannot do without the past in solving the architectural problems of our own day.

    - Hans Poelzig
      Das Deutsche Kunstgewerbe1906.

  • Tching prayed on the mountain and wroteon his bath tub. Day by day make it new cut underbrush, pile the logs keep it growing.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
    MAKE IT NEW 1954  The Cantos, no.53.

  • They walked and eat, good folks: What then? Why then they walked and eat again: They soundly slept the night away: They did just nothing all the day.

    - Matthew Prior
      'An Epitaph', l.9^12.

  • So when I am wearied with wandering all day; To thee my delight in the evening I come: No matter what beauties I saw in my way: They were but my visits; but thou art my home.

    - Matthew Prior
      'A BetterAnswer', stanza 6.

  • My soul; sit thou a patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot hath many changes, every day Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.

    - Francis Quarles
      Epigram, Respice Finem.

  • Mother always told me my day was coming, but I never realized I'd end up being the shortest knight of the year.

    - Sir Gordon Richards
      Quoted in ColinJarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech.We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.

    - Richard Rodriguez
      Frontiers,'Night and Day'.

  • Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.

    - Christina Georgina Rossetti
      Goblin Market and Other Poems,'Up-Hill'.

  • Anyway,I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's aroundnobody big, I mean except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliffI mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.

    -J(erome) D(avid) Salinger
    The Catcher in the Rye, ch.22.

  • ‚Ah s | , ponerse a escribir otra vez, que   vomitivo! ‚Como si todo esto sirviera para algo, como si todo esto fuera a entrar en alguna cabezota, a entretener a alguno de los lectores babosos, ovillados en sus poltronas, frente al sopo n  sopor|fero de cada d|a! Ah yes, going back to writing, how disgusting! As if all this had some purpose, as if all this would penetrate somethick skull, amusesome drivelling readercurledup in his armchair before the soporific stew of every day!

    -Sappho   7c
      De donde son los cantantes (translated as From Cuba with a Song,1972),'La Dolores Rondo   n'.

  • The way was long, the wind was cold, The Minstrel was infirm and old; His withered cheek, and tresses grey, Seemed to have known a better day; The harp, his sole remaining joy, Was carried byan orphan boy, The last of all the Bards was he, Who sung of Border chivalry.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lay of the Last Minstrel, introduction.

  • Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the long glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the sunbeams dart through them.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Mont Blanc'.

  • The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is pastthere is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'.

  • Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling,Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.90^7.

  • Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.115^18.

  • Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Ode to theWestWind', l.29^36.

  • A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act 4, l.551^2.

  • It was an ideal day for footballtoo cold for the spectators and too cold for the players.

    - Red Smith
      Reporting on a match between the Chicago Bears and the NewYork Giants.

  • Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.

    -Jan Christian Smuts
      Speech at theVereeniging peace talks, 31 May.

  • What I had not foreseen Was the gradual day Weakening the will Leaking the brightness away

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'What I Expected,Was'.

  • So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower, No more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower, Of manya lady, and many a paramour: Gather therefore the rose, whilst yet is prime, For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower: Gather the rose of love, whilst yet is time, Whilst loving thou mayst love'  d be with equal crime.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.2, canto12, stanza 75.

  •    Ah when will this long weary day have end, And lend me leave to come unto my love? How slowly do the hours their numbers spend! How slowly does sad Time his feathers move!

    - Edmund Spenser
      Epithalamion, section16.

  • He may be more potent than any other man. The damnable iteration dayafter day of earnest conviction wears like the dropping of the water upon the stone.

    -WilliamThomas Stead
      Of the journalist.'Government by journalism', in the Contemporary Review, May. Collected in A Journalist on Journalism (1892).

  • I've finally figured out whysoap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown- up women have to deal with all day long.

    - Gloria Steinem
      'NightThoughts of a MediaWatcher', collected in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983).

  • Life is not all Beer and Skittles. The inherent tragedy of things works itself out from white to black and blacker, and the poor things of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith? I cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things: ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it!

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Letter to Sidney Colvin, 23 Aug.

  • The longest day must have its close,the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to aneternal night, andthenightofthejusttoaneternalday.

    - Harriet (Elizabeth) ne  e Beecher Stowe
      UncleTom's Cabin, ch.40.

  • Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green, Or where his beams may not dissolve the ice, In temperate heat, where he is felt and seen, With proud people, in presence sad and wise; Set me in base, or yet in high degree, In the long night, or in the shortest day, In clear weather, or where mists thickest be, In lusty youth, or when my hairs be grey† Yours will I be, and with that only thought Comfort myself when that my hap is nought.

    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
    'Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green'.

  • I remember the way we parted, The dayand the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted, And knew we should both forget.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'An Interlude'.

  • For a dayand a night Love sang to us, played with us, Folded us round from the dark and the light; And our hearts were fulfilled with the music he made with us, Made with our hands and our lips while he stayed with us, Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight For a dayand a night.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads (2nd edn),'At Parting'.

  • Like a stone That rolls down a hill, I have come to this day.

    - Ishikawa Takuboku
      Ichiaku no Suna (translated by Sakanishi Shio).

  •    I've heard the wolves scuffle, and said: So this Is man; sowhat better conclusion is there The day will not follow night, and the heart Of man has a little dignity, but less patience Than a wolf's, and a duller sense that cannot Smell its own mortality.

    - (John Orley) Allen Tate
      Poems1922^1947,'TheWolves'.

  • There lies the port; the vessel, puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheadsyou and I are old: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows: for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides: and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and hearth: that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.44^70.

  • Our little systems have their day; They have their dayand cease to be; Theyare but broken lights of thee, And thou,O Lord, art more than they.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., prologue, l.17^20.

  • And ghastly through the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 7, l.11^12.

  • Where blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgements, unashamed, On all things all day long.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'Merlin andVivien', l.662^4.

  • Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods.

    -Tennyson
      'Lucretius',1.145^9.

  • This is the day that I was meant not to see.

    - Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
      On attending church the Sunday after she had narrowly escaped being killed in the IRA bomb explosion at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, Oct.

  • I am getting more obscure day by day.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Letter to Pamela HansfordJohnson, 9 May.

  • Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      'Do Not Go Gentle IntoThat Good Night'.

  • Un journal est un conseiller qu'on n'a pas besoin d'aller chercher, mais qui se pre  sente de lui-me"  me et qui vous parle tous les jours et brie'  vement de l'affaire commune, sans vous de  ranger de vos affaires particulie'  res. A newspaper is an adviser whom one does not need to seek out, but one who comes of his own accord and speaks to you every day, briefly, of public affairs, without disturbing you from your own.

    - Alexis Charles Henri Cle  rel de Tocqueville
    ^40  De la De  mocratie en Ame  rique (Democracy in America), vol.2, pt.2, ch.6.

  • Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

    - Anthony Trollope
      Autobiography, ch.15.

  • This is the end of Art. I am glad I have had my day.

    -Joseph Mallard William Turner
    Attributed, on first seeing a daguerrotype. Quoted inJ G Links Canaletto and his Patrons (1977).

  • Yo nac | un d|a que Dios estuvo enfermo. I was born on a day God was sick.

    - Ce  sarAbraham Vallejo
      Los heraldos negros (translated asThe Black Heralds,1990), 'Espergesia'.

  • Me morire   en Par|s con aguacero, un d|a del cual tengo ya el recuerdo. Me morire   en Par|sy no me corro tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de oton‹  o. I will die in Paris with a sudden shower, a day I can already remember. I will die in Parisand I don't budge maybe aThursday, like today is, in autumn.

    - Ce  sarAbraham Vallejo
      Poemas humanos,'Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca' (translated as'Black Stone on aWhite Stone',1968).

  • Phillis, why shou'd we delay Pleasures shorter than the day?

    - Edmund Waller
      'To Phillis'.

  • We may say 'God Save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General† Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm for the election now to be held and until polling day.

    - (Edward) Gough Whitlam
      On the Governor-General SirJohn Kerr's action in dissolving theAustralian Parliament,11 Nov.Whitlam lost the subsequent election.

  • Come lovelyand soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

    -Walt(er) Whitman
    ^66  Leaves of Grass,'Memories of President Lincoln','When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', section14.

  • The soul shrinks From all that it is about to remember, From the punctual rape of every blesse'  d day

    - Richard Wilbur
      Things ofThisWorld,'Love Calls Us to theThings ofThis World'.

  • I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, Ayear whose days are long.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pt.5, stanza1.

  • A living is made, Mr Kemper, by selling something that everybody needs at least once a year.Yes, sir! And a million ismade by producing something that everybody needs every day.You artists produce something that nobody needs at any time.

    -Thornton Niven Wilder
      The Matchmaker, act1.

  • Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

    -TennesseeThomas Lanier Williams
      In the Observer, 26 Jan.

  • There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; Turn whereso'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza1 (published1807).

  • Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his wayattended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 5 (published1807).

  • 21st Mayagloriousday forbeauty.Iwishyoucould see how lovely our country is at this fine season.

    -William Wordsworth
      Letter toWilliam Boxall, 21 May.

  • I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'Easter,1916', l.1^4. Collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).

  • Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'From Oedipus at Colonnus', stanza 4. Collected in The Tower (1928).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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