lip quotes

In youth open your mind, And let all learning in; Words the head does not shape Are worthless, out and in. Words wit has not salted,No nearer the heart than the lip, Are nothing more than wind, A puppy's insolent yelp.

-Anonymous
c.1500  'To a Boy'. Translated from the Irish by Michael O'Donovan ('Frank O'Connor').

But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,HetrustedontheL that hewoulddeliverhim: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms 22:6^8.

Now we lament one Who danced on a plume of words, Sang with a fountain's panache, Dazzled like slate roofs in sun After rain, was flighty as birds And alone as a mountain ash. The ribald, inspired urchin Leaning over the lip Of his world, as over a rock pool Or a lucky dip, Found everything brilliant and virgin.

- Cecil Day-Lewis
  'In Memory of Dylan Thomas'.

He bit his lip in a manner which immediately awakened my maternal sympathy, and I helped him bite it.

- S(ydney) J(oseph) Perelman
  Crazy Like a Fox,'The Love Decoy'.

When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

-John Greenleaf Whittier
  'The Pumpkin,'stanza 3.