Stately Quotes
More Stately Quotes
Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to walk sedately.
Robert Louis Stevenson— 1885 A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.27,'Good and Bad Children', stanza1.
The haggardness of poverty is everywhere seen contrasted with the sleekness of wealth, the exhorted labour of some compensating for the idleness of others, wretched hovels by the side of stately colonnades, the rags of indigence blended with the ensigns of opulence; in a word, the most useless profusion in the midst of the most urgent wants.
jean-baptiste say— Introduction, p. l
The Salmon is the most stately fish that any man may angle to in fresh water.
Dame Juliana or Juliana Barnes Berners— 1486 Treatyseperteynyne to Hawkynge, Huntynge, Fyshynge, and Coote Armiris.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— 1816 'Kubla Khan', opening lines.
The stately homes of England, How beautiful they stand, To prove the upper classes Have still the upper hand.
noël coward— 1938 'The Stately Homes of England' (song).
I became one of the stately homos of England.
Quentin Crisp— 1968 The Naked Civil Servant, ch.24.
Our England is a garden that is full of stately views, Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues, With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by; But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
— 1911 'The Glory of the Garden'.
From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tents of war.
Christopher Marlowe— 1587 Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, prologue.
The foundation of the government of a nation must be built upon the rights of the people, but the administration must be entrusted to experts.We must not look upon those experts as stately and grand presidents and ministers, but simply as our chauffeurs, guards at the gate, cooks, physicians, carpenters, or tailors.
SunYat-Sen or SunYixian— 1927 TheThree Principles of the People.
The stately ship is seen no more,The fragile skiff attains the shore;And while the great and wise decay,And all their trophies pass away,Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme,Still floats above the wrecks of Time.
william edward hartpole lecky— On an old Song. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;Blot out the epic’s stately rhyme,But spare his "Highland Mary!"
john greenleaf whittier— Line on Burns, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
He was a tall man with an astonishing and somehow elegant curvature of the spine, formed by an enlarged lower abdomen, which he carried in a stately and contented way, as if it contained money and securities.
john cheever— Description of a Yankee rectorThe Wapshot Scandal (1964)
The stately homes of England we proudly represent, We only keep them up for Americans to rent. Tho' the pipes that supply the bathroom burst And the lavat’ry makes you fear the worst It was used by Charles the First (quite informally), And later by George the Fourth on a journey north, The state apartments keep their historical reknown, It's wiser not to sleep there in case they tumble down; But still if they ever catch on fire Which with any luck they might, We'll fight for the stately homes of England.
noël coward— The Stately Homes of England from Operette (1937)
Gaskell could not abide this indecorous version of his beloved linear progress theory. He could not bear to imagine that the grand procession from jellyfish to man, orchestrated by an ever-increasing mass of nervous tissue, once paused in its stately and orderly march toward human consciousness in order to execute a fancy little flip, a clever jig of inversion, just at the sublime and definitive moment of entrance into the vertebral home stretch.
stephen jay gould— "Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327
A thousand miles of mighty wood Where thunder-storms stride fire-shod; A thousand flowers every rod, A stately tree on every rood; Ten thousand leaves on every tree, And each a miracle to me; And yet there be men who question God!
joaquin miller— Epigraph, Ch. 2 : Twenty Carats Fine
In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace Radiant palace reared its head.
edgar allan poe— "The Haunted Palace" (1839), st. 1.
But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is misplaced if we agree with the lady's-maid that high birth is a form of congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.
virginia woolf— "Outlines: Lady Dorothy Nevill"
Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty.____ This is pristine natural beauty. it is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations.
gao xingjian— ch. 10, p. 61.
The stately Homes of England, How beautiful they stand! Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land.
felicia hemans— Felicia Hemans, Homes of England.
Around in silent grandeur stood The stately children of the wood; Maple and elm and towering pine Mantled in folds of dark woodbine.
— Julia C. R. Dorr, At the Gate; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 372.
And the stately lilies stand Fair in the silvery light, Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer; Their pure breath sanctifies the air, As its fragrance fills the night.
— Julia C. R. Dorr, A Red Rose.
Dutch tulips from their beds Flaunted their stately heads.
james montgomery— James Montgomery, The Adventure of a Star.
There is something anachronistic about the very idea of aphorisms or maxims. Contemporary culture isn’t stately enough, or stable enough, to support them.
— Anatole Broyard (1920–1990), American literary critic. ‘Wisdom of Aphorisms’, New York Times, 30th April 1983
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry: Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary!
john greenleaf whittier— John Greenleaf Whittier, Burns, last stanza
stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore.
joyce grenfell— Stately as a Galleon (1978), "Stately as a Galleon"
stately Pines, But few more years around the promontory Your chant will meet the thunders of the sea.
bayard taylor— Bayard Taylor, The Pine Forest of Monterey.
stately and tall he moves in the hall, The chief of a thousand for grace.
— Kate Franklin, Life at Olympus, Godey's Lady's Book, Volume XXIII, p. 33.
