sunshine quotes

In Claude's landscape all is lovelyall amiableall is amenity and repose;the calm sunshine of the heart.

-John Constable
  Lecture, 2  Jun. Quoted in C R Leslie Memoirs of the Life of John Constable (1843).

Theyare our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

- E(dward) M(organ) Forster
  On railway termini. Howards End, ch.2.

But what are kings, when regiment isgone, But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?

- Christopher Marlowe
c.1591 Edward II (published1594), act 5, sc.1.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink fromtheservice of his country; but hethat standsit now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

-Thomas Paine
  The Crisis, introduction, Dec.

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;theyare the life, the soul of reading;take them out of this book for instance,you might as well take the book along with them.

- Laurence Sterne
^67  Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.22.

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.

It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

-Plum
  Blandings Castle and Elsewhere,'The Custody of the Pumpkin'.