YourDictionary

scene quotes

  • O thou, the friend of man assigned, With balmy hands his wounds to bind, And charm his frantic woe: When first Distress with dagger keen Broke forth to waste his destined scene, His wild unsated foe!

    -William Collins
      Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Pity', no.1.

  • Faithis the Pierless Bridge Supporting what We see Unto the Scene that We do not.

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    c.1864  Complete Poems, no.915 (first published1929).

  • No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

  • The four most dramatic words in the English language: 'Act One, Scene One.'

    - Moss Hart
      Act One.

  • Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve Strokes of havoc unselve The sweet especial scene Rural scene, a rural scene Sweet especial rural scene.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Binsey Poplars'.

  • He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene: But with his leener eye The axe's edge did try.

    - Andrew Marvell
      Of Charles I.'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland'.

  • When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before youa tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streakof yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.

    - Claude Monet
    Attributed, in reminiscences written in1927 by the young American artist Lilla Cabot Perry.

  • Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

    -John Henry Newman
      'Lead, kindly Light'.

  • No pleasing Intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each a mirror of the other. The suff'ring eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to Statues, Statues thick as trees, With here a Fountain, never to be play'd, And there a Summer-house, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails thro'myrtle bow'rs There Gladiators fight, or die, in flow'rs Un-water'd see the drooping sea-horse mourn, And swallows roost in Nilus'dusty Urn.

    - Alexander Pope
    Epistles to Several Persons,'To Lord Burlington', l.115^25.

  •    Awake, my St.John! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since Life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.1^6.

  • 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.

  • Whence are we, and why are we? Of what scene The actors or spectators?

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 21.

  • The sun has gane down o'er the lofty Benlomond, And left the red clouds to preside o'er the scene, While lanely I stray, in the calm simmer gloamin', To muse on sweet Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane. How sweet is the brier wi' its saft faulding blossom, And sweet is the birk, wi' its mantle o'green; Yet sweeter, and fairer, and dear to this bosom, Is lovely young Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane.

    - Robert Tannahill
      'Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane', stanza1.

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.

Learn more about scene

link/cite print suggestion box