Sourced and curated.

The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known. For a man by nothing is so well exposed, as by his manners.

Edmund Spenser

1596

★ 1.0

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Requiem · 1887

★ 1.0

Bring me the sunflower, crazed with the love of light.

Eugenio Montale

1925

★ 1.0

I never dared be radical when young For fear it would make me conservative when old.

Robert Frost

1936

★ 1.0

O you who hear within these scattered verses The sound of sighs with which I fed my heart In my first errant youthful days when I In part was not the man I am today.

Petrarch

1352

★ 1.1

For when this song is sung and past, My lute, be still, for I have done.

Thomas Wyatt

1557

★ 1.1

Sonnet · Poem

And ruined love, when it is built anew, Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 1.1

By education most have been misled.

John Dryden

The Hind and the Panther: A Poem, in Three Parts · 1687

★ 1.1

Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state And all the fawning flatterers hate: Value yourselves, and men despise You must be proud if you'll be wise.

Mary Chudleigh

To the Ladies · 1703

★ 1.1

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Lord Byron

She Walks in Beauty · 1815

★ 1.1

Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1819

★ 1.1

Poem · Magazine

I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a faery's child Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild—

John Keats

1820

★ 1.1

London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1822

★ 1.1

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power.

Alfred Tennyson

Poems · 1832

★ 1.1

Poem · Magazine

Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Knickerbocker · 1840

★ 1.1

The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other, milk.

Ogden Nash

1931

★ 1.1

How vast a memory lovers have!

Ovid

★ 1.2

The season has shed its mantle of wind and chill and rain.

Charles d'Orleans

1440

★ 1.2

But times do change and move continually.

Sir Walter Raleigh

The Faerie Queens · 1599

★ 1.2

It is difficult suddenly to lay aside a long-cherished love.

Catullus

Carmina · 54 BC

★ 1.3

Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!

Catullus

Carmina · 54 BC

★ 1.3

Look over there-smoke rises already from the rooftops And longer fall the shadows cast by the mountain heights.

37 BC

★ 1.3

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

1899

★ 1.3

On his tongue they pour sweet dew, and from his mouth flow gentle words.

Hesiod

Theogony · 700 BC

★ 1.3

Poem · Philosophical literature

One man's meat is another man's poison.

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things · 100 BC

★ 1.3

Poem · Didactic poem · Philosophical literature

Truths kindle light for truths.

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things · 55 BC

★ 1.3

Poem · Didactic poem · Philosophical literature

The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things · 55 BC

★ 1.3

Why should truth not be impress'd Beneath the cover of a jest.

Horace

Satires · 34 BC

★ 1.3

Time bears away all things, even our minds.

Eclogues · 30 BC

★ 1.3

O farmers, pray that your summers be wet and your winters clear.

Georgics · 29 BC

★ 1.3

Not every soil can bear all things.

Georgics · 29 BC

★ 1.3

Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.

Georgics · 29 BC

★ 1.3

Indeed, revenge is always the pleasure of a paltry, feeble, tiny mind.

Juvenal

Satires · 127

★ 1.3

It's difficult not to write satire.

Juvenal

Satires · 127

★ 1.3

May the gods grant you all things which your heart desires, and may they give you a husband and a home and gracious concord, for there is nothing greater and better than this-when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind, a great woe to their enemies and joy to their friends and win high renown.

The Odyssey · 700 BC

★ 1.4

Come hither, renowned Odysseus, hither, you pride and glory of all Achaea! Pause with your ship; listen to our song. Never has any man passed this way in his dark vessel and left unheard the honey-sweet music from our lips; first he has taken his delight, then gone on his way a wiser man. We know of all the sorrows in the wide land of Troy that Argives and Trojans bore because the gods would needs have it so; we know of all things that come to pass on the fruitful earth.

The Odyssey · 700 BC

★ 1.4

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass · 1855

★ 1.4

Therefore don't you be gentle to your wife either. Don't tell her everything you know, but tell her one thing and keep another thing hidden.

The Odyssey · 700 BC

★ 1.5

Whosoever obeys the gods, to him they particularly listen.

The Iliad · 700 BC

★ 1.6

The fates have given mankind a patient soul.

The Iliad · 700 BC

★ 1.6

Have patience, heart. Once you endured worse than this.

The Odyssey · 700 BC

★ 1.6

I think continually of those who were truly great... The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center. Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun, And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Stephen Spender

1955

★ 1.7

I know my soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all: I know I'm one of Nature's little kings, Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

Sir John Davies

Of Human Knowledge · 1599

★ 1.8

There's an experienced rebel, Time, And in his squadrons Poverty; There's Age that brings along with him A terrible artillery: And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown, Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down.

Thomas Flatman

1682

★ 1.8

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Which I gaze on so fondly today, Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms, Like fairy gifts fading away, Thou would'st still be ador'd as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still.

Thomas Moore

1808

★ 1.8

And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.

James Russell Lowell

A Fable of Critics · 1848

★ 1.8

The Past is like a funeral gone by The Future comes like an unwelcomed guest.

Edmund Gosse

1911

★ 1.8

To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

John McCrae

In Flanders Fields · 1915

★ 1.8

Time, you old gipsy man, Will you not stay, Put up your caravan Just for one day?

Ralph Hodgson

1917

★ 1.8

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

Wilfred Owen

1917

★ 1.8

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wilderness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

1918

★ 1.8

When we, the Workers, all demand: "What are we fighting for?"… Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that Devil's madness-War.

Robert W. Service

1921

★ 1.8

Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!

Humbert Wolfe

1926

★ 1.8

The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March.

Robert Frost

1934

★ 1.8

People who are always praising the past And especially the times of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

Stevie Smith

1957

★ 1.8

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra just for you.

Philip Larkin

1971

★ 1.8

The season of ships is here, The west wind and the swallows; Flowers in the fields appear, And the ocean of hills and hollows Has calmed its waves and is clear. Free that anchor and chain! Set your full canvas flying, O men in the harbor lane: It is I, Pirapus crying. Sail out on your trades again!

Leonidas of Tarentum

Spring on the Coast · 200 BC

★ 1.9

Though I grieve, there is no help; Vainly I long to see her. Men tell me that my wife is In the mountains of Hagai- Thither I go, Toiling along the stony path; But it avails me not, For of my wife, as she lived in this world, I find not the faintest shadow.

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

759

★ 1.9