Bliss Carman Quotations

What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn, but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run.

There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.

Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.

I often wish... that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

Thank God for poverty That makes and keeps us free And lets us go our unobtrusive way, Glad of the sun and rain, Upright, serene, humane, Contented with the fortune of a day.

The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man.

On the shining yards of heaven See a wider dawn unfurled. . . . The eternal slaves of beauty Are the masters of the world.

Have little care that Life is brief, And less that Art is long. Success is in the silences Though Fame is in the song.

A 'fact' merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.

I took a day to search for God, And found Him not. But as I trod By rocky ledge, through woods untamed, Just where one scarlet lily flamed, I saw His foot print in the sod.

Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune I saw the white daisies go down to the sea, A host in the sunshine, an army in June, The people God sends us to set our heart free.

Love manifests itself in our bodies as instinctive craving, in our souls as devotion, and in our minds as pride.

There is only one way in the world to be distinguished. Follow your instinct! Be yourself, and you'll be somebody. Be one more blind follower of the blind, and you will have the oblivion you desire.

It is not being out at heels that makes a man discontented, it is being out at heart. To be contented is to be good friends with yourself.

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood- Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

There is a passion for perfection which you rarely see fully developed but . . . in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.

I heard the spring light whisper Above the dancing stream, The world is made forever in likeness of a dream.

Where there is writing- there is a writer Where there is planning- there is a planner Where there is a building- there is a builder Where there is a miracle- there is a God!

The first need of being is endurance; to endure with gladness if we can, with fortitude in any event.

Lord of the far horizons, Give us the eyes to see Over the verge of the sundown The beauty that is to be.

The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the The greatest joy in nature is the absence of man