William Cullen Bryant

“Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.”

“To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.”

“Weep not that the world changes - did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.”

“All that tread,The globe are but a handful to the tribes,That slumber in its bosom.”

“Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.”

“Loveliest of lovely things are they on earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.”

“There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by a loving eye; There is no fragrance in April breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by.”

“Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.”

“The groves were God's first temples.”

“So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which movesTo that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."Thanatopsis”