port quotes

   Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false impossible shore.

- Matthew Arnold
  Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'A Summer Night', l.68^9.

I am glad you have asked me. I should like you to convey when you are acting it that the man you portray has a brother in Shropshire who drinks port. Barth

- SirJ(ames) M(atthew) Barrie
Responding to a young actor's urgent request for advice as to how he should play a minor part in one of Barrie's plays. Attributed.

Here is a pleasant situation, and yet nothing pleasant to be seen. Here is a harbour without ships, a port without trade, a fishery without nets, a people without business; and, that which is worse than all, they do not seem to desire business, much less do they understand it.

- Daniel Defoe
^7  Of Kirkcudbright, Scotland.  A  Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, letter12.

A ship inport issafe butthat'snot what ships are builtfor.

- Grace Murray Hopper
   Address at Trinity College, Washington. Reported in Time, 22  Jun.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero [smiling] must drink brandy.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Remark,7  Aug. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

- Edmund Spenser
  The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 9, stanza 40.

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.

And when they buried him the little port Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

-Tennyson
  'Enoch Arden', closing words.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

-Walt(er) Whitman
  Leaves of Grass,'Memories of President Lincoln','O Captain! My Captain!'