nobleness quotes

[The translator] will find one English book and one only, where, as in the Iliad itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect nobleness; and that book isthe Bible.

- Matthew Arnold
On Translating Homer, lecture 3.

What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there anotherTroy for her to burn?

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'No SecondTroy', l.6^12. Collected inThe Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910).