William C. Bryant
Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.Collection: Nature
Difficulty is the nurse of greatness.Collection: Greatness
The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine the animadvert upon all political institutions is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall into despotism and anarchy.Collection: Fall
Truth crushed to the earth will rise again!Collection: Earth
Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth in her fair page.Collection: Beautiful
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson.Collection: Fall
Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything in second place.Collection: Positive
The press, important as is its office, is but the servant of the human intellect, and its ministry is for good or for evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill which grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain, and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.Collection: Character
I grieve for life's bright promise, just shown and then withdrawn.Collection: Grieving
Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.Collection: Mean
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.Collection: Sympathy
The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep to-night.Collection: Summer
Pleasantly, between the pelting showers, the sunshine gushes down.Collection: Sunshine
The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.Collection: Nature
Virtue cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke.Collection: Tyrants
Adversity is the nurse of greatness which roughly rocks her patients back to health.Collection: Adversity
Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.Collection: Strength
The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.Collection: Clouds
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.Collection: Wisdom
[Thanatopsis] was written in 1817, when Bryant was 23. Had he died then, the world would have thought it had lost a great poet. But he lived on.Collection: World
Flowers spring up unsown and die ungathered.Collection: Spring
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven's own blue.Collection: Autumn
And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.Collection: Lonely
The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other.Collection: Determination
It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician.Collection: Physicians
The hushed winds their Sabbath keep.Collection: Wind
The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by. As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.Collection: Summer
Much has seen said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.Collection: Wise
Genius, with all its pride in its own strength, is but a dependent quality, and cannot put forth its whole powers nor claim all its honors without an amount of aid from the talents and labors of others which it is difficult to calculate.Collection: Pride
The journalist should be on his guard against publishing what is false in taste or exceptionable in morals.Collection: Taste
Follow thou thy choice.Collection: Choices
Is not thy home among the flowers?Collection: Flower
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.Collection: Dream