Desolate Quotes
More Desolate Quotes
If there is to be a war between England and the United States, tis impossible for us to pretend sympathy with the former. We shall have allies, not enemies, on the banks of the Columbia, and distant and desolate as are those tracts beyond the Rocky Mountains, even there may arise an opportunity for demanding and regaining our place among the nations.
john mitchel— Article in The Nation newspaper on 6 December, 1845, an article entitled "Oregon—Ireland", in reference to the dispute then pending between England and America about Oregon.
None are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possessed A thought, and claims the homage of a tear.
Rochdale— 1812-18 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 2, stanza 24.
Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space—In Twilight-land—in No-man’s land—Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand. “And who are you?” cried one, agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. “I know not, ” said the second Shape, “I only died last night.”
thomas bailey aldrich— Identity; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone,Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan.
frederick William faber— The Sorrowful World, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.
nicholas hilliard— George Stillman Hillard Six Months in Italy (1853), ch. 5.
The while He sits whose name is Love,And waits, as Noah did, for the dove,To wit if she would fly to him.He waits for us, while, houseless things,We beat about with bruised wingsOn the dark floods and water-springs,The ruined world, the desolate sea;With open windows from the primeAll night, all day, He waits sublime,Until the fulness of the timeDecreed from His eternity.
jean ingelow— "Scholar and Carpenter".
To Him let us but cleave in all ouv strife; and the Tempte1 will flee; the wilderness will be desolate no more; angels will come and minister unto us; and when we pass from them to the ministry of life, be it to the glory of a transfiguration, the sorrows of a Gethsemane, or the sacrifice of the cross, the tran- quilizing peace of God will never be far from us.
james martineau— P. 592. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heartBut colder those wild words of doom,—“Ye must part.”
sarah helen whitman— Our Island of Dreams.
These are the desolate, dark weeks when nature in its barrenness equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night and the heart plunges lower than night
william carlos williams— "These"
No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1818), Stanza 8.
My God, whose son, as on this night, took on Him the form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controls thy hand, and without His behest, thou canst not strike a stroke. My God is sinless, eternal, all-wise, and in Him is my trust, and though stripped and crushed by thee, -though naked, desolate, void of resource- I do not despair:where the lance of Guthrum now wet with my blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray: Jehovah, in His own time, will aid.
charlotte brontë— Ch. XVI (The Professor (1857))
I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.
thomas hardy— The Darkling Thrush (1900), lines 1-8, from Poems of the Past and Present (1901).
Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind's desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.
abraham joshua heschel— "The Holy Dimension", p. 332
No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Endymion, st. 8 (1842)
Lo! all things moving must go by. The sea lies dead. Behold, this land Sits desolate in dust beside His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand; The very clouds have wept and died, And only God is in the sky.
joaquin miller— XXXV (The Ship in the Desert (1875))
There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. ... He is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bag of clothes.
friedrich nietzsche— “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, st. 2.
The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lonely mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate.
robert service— Robert Service, The Land God Forgot.
He that has no present Christ has a future, dark, chaotic, heaving with its destructive ocean; and over it there goes forever black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless flight, the raven of his anxious thoughts, and finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future.
— Alexander Maclaren, p. 340. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams. Wandering by lone sea-breakers, and sitting by desolate streams; world-losers and world-forsakers, of whom the pale moon gleams. Yet we are the movers and shakers of the world for ever, it seems.
— Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Music Makers.
Sainte Jeanne went harvesting in France, But ah! what found she there? The little streams were running red, And the torn fields were bare; And all about the ruined towers Where once her king was crowned, The hurtling ploughs of war and death Had scored the desolate ground.
Marion Couthoy Smith— Marion Couthouy Smith—Sainte Jeanne of France. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
— George Eliot, as quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 219
The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart But colder those wild words of doom, “Ye must part.”
— Sarah Helen Whitman, in "Our Island of Dreams"
It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shoresand with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns.
john keats— 1817 'On the Sea'.
desolate and dreary as the little town was in the world of today, it was infinitely more liveable than the same town of nearly two centuries before. There had been much progress in how to do things. It was regrettable that there was less progress in knowledge of things worth doing.
murray leinster— Chapter 5 (p. 59)
