Anna Letitia Barbauld Quotes

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

The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.

We can only love what we know.

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

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!

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

The first pale blossom of the unripened year.

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

It is to hope, though hope were lost.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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