sweetness quotes

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light† He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.

- Matthew Arnold
  Culture and  Anarchy, ch.1.

Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the passion for making them prevail.

- Matthew Arnold
  Literature and Dogma, preface.

Still I enjoy The long sweetness of the simultaneity, yours and mine, ours and mine, The mosquitoey summer night light.

-John Lawrence Ashbery
Shadow Train,'Here Everything Is Still Floating'.

Je n'e  cris point d'amour, n'estant point amoureux, Je n'e  cris de beaute  , n'aiant belle maistresse, Je n'e  cris de douceur, n'esprouvant que rudesse, Je n'e  cris de plaisir, me trouvant douloureux. I cannot write of love, as I am not in love, I cannot write of beauty, as I have no beautiful mistress, I cannot write of sweetness, as I experience nothing but hardship, I cannot write of pleasure, as I am always in pain.

-Joachim du Bellay
  Les Regrets, no.79.

And hesaiduntothem,Outoftheeatercameforthmeat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Judges14:14.

Jesu, the very thought of Thee With sweetness fills the breast.

- Edward Caswall
  Hymns and Poems,'Jesu, the Very Thought of  Thee' (a translation from12c Latin, often attributed to St Bernard).

'I know of no joy,'she airily began,'greater than a cool white dress after the sweetness of confession.'

- (ArthurAnnesley) Ronald Firbank
  Valmouth, ch.4.

Ulysses†is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

- E(dward) M(organ) Forster
  Of  James  Joyce's1922 novel.  Aspects of the Novel, ch.6.

Full manya gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full manya flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

-Thomas Gray
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.52^6.

  Yield, ladies, yield to love, ladies, which lurketh under your eyelids whilst you sleep and playeth with your heartstrings whilst you wake, whose sweetness never breedeth satiety, labour weariness, nor grief bitterness.

-John Lyly
  Gallathea, epilogue.

Wildness and silence disappeared fromthe countryside, sweetness fell from the air, not because anyone wished them to vanish or fall but because throughways had to floor the meadows with cement to carry the automobiles which advancing technology produced.

- Archibald MacLeish
  'The Great  American Frustration', in the Saturday Review, 9  Jul.

There can be no danger in sweetness and youth Where love is secured by good nature and truth, On her beauty I'll gaze, and of pleasure complain, While every kind look adds a link to my chain.

-JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
'The Submission', l.13^16 (published1680).

Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honeyand wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

-Jonathan Swift
  The Battle of the Books.

   Love mixed with fear is sweetness.

-John Webster
  The Duchess of Malfi, act 3, sc.2.