William Cullen Bryant Quotes

Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness.

Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon - the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.

Isn't man but a blossom taken by wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this land of the gods everlasting?

The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here. Yet she stepped out all the same.

This is the spot where I will lie When life has had enough of me, These are the grasses that will blow Above me like a living sea. These gay old lilies will not shrink To draw their life from death of mine, And I will give my body's fire To make blue flowers on this vine. "O Soul," I said, "have you no tears? Was not the body dear to you?" I heard my soul say carelessly, "The myrtle flowers will grow more blue.

We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die.

This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

My intuition told me that it was the grass that was important.Now it glows parrot-green, cool as mint, soft as moss, lying there like a cashmere blanket.

The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.

I wind about, and in and out, - With here a blossom sailing, - And here and there a lusty trout, - And here and there a grayling.

Living there [Horse Mesa] was like living in a natural cathedral. Waking up every morning, you walked outside and looked down at the blue lake, then up at the sandstone cliffs--those awe-inspiring layers of red and yellow rock shaped over the millennia, with dozens of black-streaked crevices that temporarily became waterfalls after rainstorms.

In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.

Snow. White, white, white, soft and clean, and maddening shapes, with the whole world in them.

Oh! where do fairies hide their heads, When snow lies on the hills, When frost has spoiled their mossy beds, And crystallized their rills?

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie ...imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light.

As bronze may be much beautified by lying in the dark damp soil, so men who fade in dust of warfare fade fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.

For life is a trumpery thing at best, isn't it? A few moments, a few words, between dark and dark. But in true love you keep company with the Gods.

The long morning shadows lay as still and dark as lakes and patterned the rough ground with straight margins.