65 Quotes by Joanna Baillie

Words of affection, howsoe’er expressed, The latest spoken still are deem’d the best.

I can bear scorpion’s stings, tread fields of fire, in frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie, be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void, but cannot live in shame.

Still on it creeps, Each little moment at another’s heels, Till hours, days, years, and ages are made up Of such small parts as these, and men look back Worn and bewilder’d, wondering how it is.

Good-morrow to thy sable beak, And glossy plumage, dark and sleek, Thy crimson moon and azure eye.

He that will not give some portion of his ease, his blood, his wealth, for other’s good, is a poor, frozen churl.

To make the cunning artless, tame the rude, subdue the haughty, shake the undaunted soul; yea, put a bridle in the lion’s mouth, and lead him forth as a domestic cur, – these are the triumphs of all-powerful beauty.

Think’st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune’s sun, And sting the soul.

Oh swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher’s chorus-note Soft moves the dipping oar.

Ah! happy is the man whose early lot Hath made him master of a furnish’d cot; Who trains the vine that round his window grows, And after setting sun his garden hoes; Whose wattled pails his own enclosure shield, Who toils not daily in another’s field.