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smile quotes

  • When the guns begin to rattle And the men to die Does the Goddess of the Battle Smile or sigh?

    - George Granville Barker
      'Battle Hymn of the New Republic'.

  • For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile.

    - Rupert Chawner Brooke
      'The Old Vicarage, Grantchester'.

  • She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

    - Raymond Chandler
      Farewell, My Lovely, ch.18

  •   Out where the handclasp's a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That's where the West begins.

    - Arthur Chapman
      Out Where the West Begins, stanza1.

  • The way your smile just beams The way you sing off key The way you haunt my dreams No, no! They can't take that away from me!

    - Ira originally Israel Gershowitz Gershwin
      'They Can't  Take That  Away from Me', song from the film musical Shall We Dance? (music by George Gershwin).

  • This man,Comrades, has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth.

    - Alfred Whitney Griswold
      Speech to the Supreme Soviet on proposing Mikhail Gorbachev as the new party leader.

  • Je  sus a pleure , Voltaire a souri; c'est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu'est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle. Jesus wept;Voltairesmiled.Of that divinetearand of that human smile the sweetness of present civilization is composed.

    -Victor Marie Hugo
      Speech on Voltaire's centenary, 30 May.

  •    Operationally,God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.

    - SirJulian Sorell Huxley
      Religion  without Revelation (rev edn), ch.3.

  • Father in Heaven, whenthethoughtof Thee wakesinour hearts, let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
    Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru,1938).

  • I had learned that if one cannot call a country to heel like a dog, neither can one dismiss the past with a smile in an easygushof feeling, saying: Icould not help it,Iamalsoa victim.

    - Doris May ne  e Tayler Lessing
    This was the Old Chief's Country,'The Old Chief Mshlanga'.

  • It is not easy to make a simile go on all fours.

    -1st Baron
      Of the task of the allegorist.'Robert Southey's edition of Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress', in the Edinburgh Review, Dec.

  • 'My father is deceased.Come,Gaveston, And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.' Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight! What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston Than live and be the favourite of a king? Sweet prince, I come; these, these thyamorous lines Might have enforced me to have swum from France, And, like Leander, gasped upon the sand, So thou would'st smile, and take me in thy arms.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1591  Gaveston is reading a letter from King Edward. Edward II (published1594), act1, sc.1.

  • Willie was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life† He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling backthat's an earthquake.

    - Arthur Miller
      Charley. Death of a Salesman,'Requiem'.

  • And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Strange Meeting', collected in Poems (published1920).

  • Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.

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

  • Quand une femme me para|"t belle, je n'ai rien a'   en dire. Je la vois sourire, tout simplement. Les intellectuels de  montent le visage, pour l'expliquer par les morceaux, mais ils ne voient plus le sourire. When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.

    - Antoine de Saint-Exupe  ry
      Pilote de guerre.

  • Un sourire est souvent l'essentiel. On est paye   par un sourire. On est re  compense   par un sourire.On est anime par un sourire. Et la qualite   d'un sourire peut faire que l'on meure. A smile is often the key thing.One is paid with a smile. One is rewarded with a smile.One is brightened by a smile. And the quality of a smile can make one die.

    - Antoine de Saint-Exupe  ry
      Lettre a'   un otage.

  • Look back, and smile at perils past!

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Bridal of Triermain, introduction.

  • The Harper smiled, well pleased; for ne'er Was flattery lost on poet's ear: A simple race! they waste their toil For the vain tribute of a smile.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 4, conclusion.

  • Every communist has a fascist frown, every fascist a communist smile.

    - Dame Muriel Sarah ne  e  Camberg Spark
      The Girls of Slender Means.

  • From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Lady ClaraVere deVere', stanza 7, l.50^6.

  • Then, with that faint fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful,Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

    -James Grover Thurber
      'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', in the NewYorker,18 Mar.

  • If I laugh on that particular day I become so filled with Laughing Gas that I simply can't keep on the ground. Even if I smile it happens.The first funny thought, and I'm up like a balloon. And until I can thinkof something serious I can't get down again.

    - P(amela) L(yndon) Travers
      MrWigg, Mary Poppins's uncle.The'particular day' is when his birthday falls on a Friday. Mary Poppins, ch.3.

  • Even so for me a vision sanctified The sway of death; long ere my eyes had seen Thy countenancethe still rapture of thy mien When thou, dear Sister! wert become death's bride: No trace of pain or languor could abide That changeage on thy brow was smoothedthy cold Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold A loveliness to living youth denied. Oh! if within me hope should e'er decline, The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn; The may that heaven-revealing smile of thine, The bright assurance, visibly return: And let my spirit in that power divine Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.

    -William Wordsworth
      'November1836', complete poem (published1837).

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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