Philip James Bailey Quotes

The death-bed of a day, how beautiful!

What are ye orbs? The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?

There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.

For ivy climbs the crumbling hall To decorate decay.

Respect is what we owe; love, what we give.

Surely the stars are images of love.

Ask not of me, love, what is love? Ask what is good of God above; Ask of the great sun what is light; Ask what is darkness of the night; Ask sin of what may be forgiven; Ask what is happiness of heaven; Ask what is folly of the crowd; Ask what is fashion of the shroud; Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss; Ask of thyself what beauty is.

Art is a man's nature; nature is God's art.

I cannot be content with less than heaven; Living, and comprehensive of all life. Thee, universal heaven, celestial all; Thee, sacrjd seat of intellective time; Field of the soul 's best wisdom : home of truth , Star-throned.

Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

Death, thou art infinite; it is life is little.

The death-change comes. Death is another life. We bow our heads At going out, we think, and enter straight Another golden chamber of the king's Larger than this we leave, and lovelier. And then in shadowy glimpses, disconnect, The story, flower-like, closes thus its leaves. The will of God is all in all. He makes, Destroys, remakes, for His own pleasure, all.

Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can.

Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.

Evil then results from imperfection.

When I forget that the stars shine in air-- When I forget that beauty is in stars-- When I forget that love with beauty is-- Will I forget thee: till then all things else.

I am tired of looking on what is, One might as well see beauty never more, As look upon it with an empty eye. I would this world were over. I am tired.

Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life But needs it and may learn.

Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.

The worst men often give the best advice. Our deeds are sometimes better than our thoughts.

It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel.

Joys Are bubble-like--what makes them bursts them too.

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self.

Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

The temples perish, but the God still lives.

Hell is more bearable than nothingness.

The sun, centre and sire of light, The keystone of the world-built arch of heaven.

Where imperfection ceaseth, heaven begins.

Doubt is the shadow of truth.

Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.

Night comes, world-jewelled, . . . The stars rush forth in myriads as to wage War with the lines of Darkness; and the moon, Pale ghost of Night, comes haunting the cold earth After the sun's red sea-death--quietless.

My favoured temple is an humble heart.

The truth of truths is love.

Lips like rosebuds peeping out of snow.

Hell is the wrath of God--His hate of sin.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

Thou art a woman, And that is saying the best and worst of thee.

Error is worse than ignorance.

Sorrow is a stone that crushes a single bearer to the ground, while two are able to carry it with ease.

Imagination is the air of mind.

When pride thaws, look for floods.

It is sad To see the light of beauty wane away, Know eyes are dimming, bosoms shrivelling, feet Losing their springs, and limbs their lily roundness; But it is worse to feel the heart-spring gone, To lose hope, care not for the coming thing, And feel all things go to decay within us.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

It is much less what we do than what we think, which fits us for the future.

Remember that thy heart will shed its pleasures as thine eye its tears, and both leave loathsome furrows.

Grief hallows hearts, even while it ages heads.

Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.

Look on the bee upon the wing 'mong flowers; How brave, how bright his life! then mark, him hiv'd, Cramp'd, cringing in his self-built, social cell, Thus it is in the world-hive; most where men Lie deep in cities as in drifts.

It matters not how long we live but how.