Stir Quotes - 2
More Stir Quotes
As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: All was black, In heaven no single star, on earth no track; A brooding hush without a stir or note; The air so thick it clotted in my throat.
james thomson— The City of Dreadful Night, part 4 (1874)
And round thee with the breeze of song To stir a little dust of praise.
Tennyson— 1850 In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 75, l.11-12.
One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.
brian aldiss— Report On Probability A (1968)
Mortality, behold and fear!What a change of flesh is here!Think how many royal bonesSleep within this heap of stones:Here they lie, had realms and lands,Who now want strength to stir their hands
Francis Beaumont— On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey
Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls,Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars —They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble,Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesyThat something new is coming to the world,The Lord knows what!Well, it's a long time coming,And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.
stephen vincent benét— Innkeeper
I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder.
thomas chalmers— P. 83. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
But when the country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.
thomas paine— The Crisis No. VII
Thackeray is everybody's past — is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself.
william makepeace thackeray— G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913) [University of Notre Dame Press, 1963], Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 64).
It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion.
joseph addison— No. 47 (24 April 1711).
So, in our wisdom and fair justice we go on "Giving to dust that is a little gilt, More laud than gold e'er dusted;" proclaiming the merits of the bad wine, and making it, by every token, as enticing as we can; and blessing our stars that the good will be found out by its flavor "without our stir." As it is inestimable, we seek not to win esteem for it; as it is beyond all praise, we bestow no praises upon it.
samuel laman blanchard— "That Good Wine Needs No Bush"
We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.
john cheever— The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1956 entry
Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast.
ted hughes— "Pike", line 33
As when, upon a tranced summer-night, Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, As if the ebbing air had but one wave.
john keats— Bk. I, l. 72.
He seem'd as lithe and free and tall And restless as the boughs that stir Perpetual topt poplar trees. And one, that one, had eyes to teach The art of love, and tongue to preach Life's hard and sober homilies; And yet his eager hands, his speech, All spoke the bold adventurer; While zoned about the belt of each There swung a girt of steel, till all Did seem a walking arsenal.
joaquin miller— III, p. 23. (The Ship in the Desert (1875))
This creature comes from out the dim Far centuries, beyond the rim Of time's remotest reach or stir.
joaquin miller— IV, p. 28. (The Ship in the Desert (1875))
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence...
— Daniel Burnham quoted in: Charles Moore (1921) Daniel H. Burnham, Architect, Planner of Cities Boston, Houghton Mifflin. p.19-21
An old affront will stir the heart Through years of rankling pain.
jean ingelow— Jean Ingelow, Poems, Strife and Peace.
A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole, It does not look likely to stir a man's Soul, 'Tis the deeds that were done 'neath the moth-eaten rag, When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag.
— Sir Sir Edward Hamley on seeing some old Colours of the 32nd Foot in Monmouth Church.
— "Regimental Colours, Banners, and Flags Past and Present", in the regimental website of the Lincoln and Wetland Regiment. Accessed 09 September 2010.
A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole, It does not look likely to stir a man's soul. 'Tis the deeds that were done 'neath the moth-eaten rag, When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag.
— Gen. Sir E. Hamley, referring to the Colors of the 43rd Monmouth Light Infantry.
Because its myriad glimmering plumes Like a great army's stir and wave; Because its golden billows blooms, The poor man's barren walks to lave: Because its sun-shaped blossoms show How souls receive the light of God, And unto earth give back that glow I thank him for the Goldenrod.
lucy larcom— Lucy Larcom, Goldenrod.
THE GRASS so little has to do, A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain, And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything.
— Emily Dickinson, "Nature".
Beneath a shivering canopy reclined, Of aspen leaves that wave without a wind, I love to lie, when lulling breezes stir The spiry cones that tremble on the fir.
— John Leyden, Noontide.
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.
john keats— John Keats, Hyperion (1818-19), Book I, line 73.
I adjure you, o daughters of Jerusalem, that you stir not up nor awaken love until it please.
— The Bible, Song of Solomon 8:4.
When the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.
— William Wordsworth, lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 911-17.
All hell shall stir for this!
— Pistol, scene i
Or (almost) like a Spider, who, confin'd In her Web's centre, shakt with every winde, Moves in an instant, if the buzzing Flie stir but a string of her Lawn Canopie.
guillaume de salluste du bartas— Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, First Week, Sixth Day, line 998.
