Anna Letitia Barbauld Quotations

The most characteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some one important object, and pursue it for life.

The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.

But every act in consequence of our faith, strengthens faith.

The best way for women to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father, a brother, or a friend, in the way of family intercourse and easy conversation, and by such a course of reading as they may recommend.

We neither laugh alone, nor weep alone, why then should we pray alone?

When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; when man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!

The world has little to bestow Where two fond hearts in equal love are joined.

Fair Venus shines Even in the eve of day, with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of softened radiance from her dewy locks.

Eternity.—Thy name Or glad, or fearful, we pronounce, as thoughts Wandering in darkness shape thee. Thou strange being, Which art and must be, yet which contradict'st All sense, all reasoning,—thou, who never wast Less than thyself, and who still art thyself Entire, though the deep draught which Time has taken Equals thy present store—No line can reach To thy unfathomed depths. The reasoning sage Who can dissect a sunbeam, count the stars, And measure distant worlds, is here a child, And, humbled, drops his calculating pen.

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.

Society than solitude is worse, And man to man is still the greatest curse.

You speak of beginning the education of your son. The moment he was able to form an idea his education was already begun. . . .

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.

And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander's ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson must By Time's slow finger written in the dust.

Time deals gently with me; and though I feel that I descend, the slope is easy ...

You, that have toiled during youth, to set your son upon higher ground, and to enable him to begin where you left off, do not expect that son to be what you were, - diligent, modest, active, simple in his tastes, fertile in resources. You have put him under quite a different master. Poverty educated you; wealth will educate him. You cannot suppose the result will be the same.

Nobody ought to be too old to improve: I should be sorry if I was; and I flatter myself I have already improved considerably by my travels. First, I can swallow gruel soup, egg soup, and all manner of soups, without making faces much. Secondly, I can pretty well live without tea ...

We may think all religions beneficial, and believe of one alone that it is true.

it is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.

Let us confess a truth, humiliating to human pride; - a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association - in short, by prejudice.

many things I knew, I have forgotten; many things I thought I knew, I find I know nothing about; some things I know, I have found not worth knowing; and some things I would give - O what would one not give to know? are beyond the reach of human ken.

if an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect.

Englishmen are said to love their laws; - that is the reason, I suppose, they give us so many of them, and in different editions.

we should contract our ideas of education, and expect no more from it than it is able to perform.

The well taught philosophic mind To all compassion gives; Casts round the world an equal eye, And feels for all that lives.

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

The first pale blossom of the unripened year.

Life! we've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; Tis hard to part when friends are dear,- Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear. Then steal away, give little warning. Choose thine own time, Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime, Bid me "Good-morning."

It is to hope, though hope were lost.

Young gentlemen, who are to display their knowledge to the world, should have every motive of emulation, should be formed into regular classes, should read and dispute together, should have all the honors, and, if one may say so, the pomp of learning set before them, to call up their ardor. It is their business, and they should apply to it as such.

There is a land, where the roses are without thorns, where the flowers are not mixed with brambles. In that land, there is eternal spring, and light without any cloud. The tree of life groweth in the midst thereof; rivers of pleasures are there, and flowers that never fade. Myriads of happy spirits are there, and surround the throne of God with a perpetual hymn. The angels with their golden harps sing praises continually, and the cherubim fly on wings of fire! This country is Heaven...

Say not 'Good-night' but in some brighter clime, bid me 'Good-morning.'

The awakenings of remorse, virtuous shame and indignation, the glow of moral approbation if they do not lead to action, grow less and less vivid every time they occur, till at length the mind grows absolutely callous.

Of her scorn the maid repented, And the shepherd - of his love.

We can only love what we know.

While Genius was thus wasting his strength in eccentric flights, I saw a person of a very different appearance, named Application.

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?

Forgotten rimes, and college themes, Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes; A mass of heterogeneous matter. A chaos dark, nor land nor water.

Happy is he to whom, in the maturer season of life, there remains one tried and constant friend...

Children have almost an intuitive discernment between the maxims you bring forward for their use, and those by which you direct your own conduct.