12 Quotes by William Batchelder Greene

Hide what you have to hide And tell what you have to tell You’ll see your problems multiplied If you continually decide To faithfully pursue The policy of truth.

Society is older than government. But every persisting society implies the existence of government and laws; for a society without government and laws is at once overturned by its madmen and scoundrels and lapses into barbarism.

Life is a waste of woes, And Death a river deep, That ever onward flows, Troubled, yet asleep.

Like a goddess on her azure hill, the star of my ambition, the mistress of my dream; a thing apart, that we can worship, but not touch; a wild desire, that, in the madness of the thought, soars higher in its dignity, and leaves me weeping in the dust.

The Ideal is the invisible Sun which is always on the meridian of the soul.

Thou slanting rain! Thou Hebe of the Skies, That pours out drink to Earth; thou faithful wife That with moist tears embraces her prone lord. Thou mist intensified; thou double dew That drowns the drought, that heals the parched and burnt – Thou resurrection rain.

Woman, thou art a river, deep and wide, Of waters soft and sweet: Alas! I’ve never reached the other side; Though oft I’ve wet my feet!

Faith is reason denying absurdity in the face of the unknown.

Man, having an ideal before him of that which he ought to be, and is not, and acting as though he possessed the character he ought to have, but has not, comes, by the very virtue of his aspiration, to possess the character he imagines.