All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Aphorisms, proverbs, wise sayings and other witty, pithy stuff
Awake, ye West Winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy freshness breathes the gale,
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake,
And Evening comes with locks bodropp’d with dew;
On Desmond’s mouldering turrets slowly shake
The trembling rye-grass and the harehell blue,
And ever and anon fair Mulla’s plaints renew.
William Julius Mickle
The best of parents blest my younger days;
What others teach with frowns, they taught with praise.
William Julius Mickle
The moon, full-orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o’er the glistening waves, and quivering play;
Around her, glittering on the heaven’s arched brow,
Unnumbered stars, enclosed in azure, glow,
Thick as the dew-drops of the April dawn,
Or May-flowers crowding o’er the daisy lawn;
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The masts’ tall shadows tremble o’er the deep;
The peaceful winds a holy silence keep;
The watchman’s carol, echoed from the prows,
Alone, at times, awakes the still repose.
William Julius Mickle
None but a poet can translate a poet.
William Julius Mickle
Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos.
Alice Meynell
In childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher sensibility for April and April evenings—a heartache for them, which in riper years is gradually and irretrievably consoled.
Alice Meynell
There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a child’s foot runs.
Alice Meynell
Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.
Alice Meynell
There is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be mortal.
Alice Meynell
No, children love a fairy story not because they think it true, but because they think it untrue, and because it makes no fraudulent appeal to their excellent good sense. That sense they are delighted to put aside while they “pretend.” That is their own word.[…] “Let’s pretend,” not “Let’s believe.” Their mother does not put “Let’s pretend” into the child’s mouth; she finds it there. Without it there is no play. But the pretending is always drama and never deception or self-deception.
Alice Meynell