Joanna Baillie Quotes

51 Sourced Quotes

Half-uttered praise is to the curious mind, as to the eye half-veiled beauty is, more precious than the whole.

Joanna Baillie
'Tis ever thus when favours are denied;
All had been granted but the thing we beg:
And still some great unlikely substitute —
Your life, your soul, your all of earthly good —
Is proffer'd, in the room of one small boon.

Joanna Baillie
Can spirit from the tomb, or fiend from hell,
More hateful, more malignant be than man —
Than villainous man?

Joanna Baillie
A woman is seldom roused to great and courageous exertion but when something most dear to hear is in immediate danger.

Joanna Baillie
O mysterious Night! thou art not silent; many tongues hast thou.

Joanna Baillie
This pure air
Braces the listless nerves, and warms the blood:
I feel in freedom here.

Joanna Baillie
Though duller thoughts succeed, the bliss e'en of a moment still is bliss.

Joanna Baillie
War is honorable
In those who do their native rights maintain;
In those whose swords an iron barrier are
Between the lawless spoiler and the weak;
But is, in those who draw th' offensive blade
For added power or gain, sordid and despicable
As meanest office of the worldly churl.

Joanna Baillie
Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd,
The latest spoken still are deem'd the best.

Joanna Baillie
I am as one
Who doth attempt some lofty mountain's height,
And having gained what to the upcast eye
the summit's point appear'd, astonish'd sees
Its cloudy top, majestic and enlarged,
Towering aloft, as distant as before.

Joanna Baillie
Heaven oft in mercy smites, even when the blow severest is.

Joanna Baillie
My day is closed! the gloom of night is come! a hopeless darkness settles over my fate.

Joanna Baillie
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.

Joanna Baillie
The hushed winds wail with feeble moan
Like infant charity.

Joanna Baillie
It ever is the marked propensity of restless and aspiring minds to look into the stretch of dark futurity.

Joanna Baillie
A good man's prayers will from the deepest dungeon climb heaven's height, and bring a blessing down.

Joanna Baillie
But woman's grief is like a summer storm,
Short as it violent is.

Joanna Baillie
Stand there, damn'd meddling villain, and be silent;
For if thou utt'rest but a single word,
A cough or hem, to cross me in my speech,
I'll send thy cursed spirit from the earth,
To bellow with the damn'd!

Joanna Baillie
He is so full of pleasant anecdote;
So rich, so gay, so poignant in his wit,
Time vanishes before him as he speaks,
And ruddy morning through the lattice peeps
Ere night seems well begun.

Joanna Baillie
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.

Joanna Baillie
Time never bears such moments on his wing as when he flies too swiftly to be marked.

Joanna Baillie