M.K. Alexander Quotes

Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.

The doubtful beam long nods from side to side.

Live like yourself, was soon my lady's word, And lo! two puddings smok'd upon the board.

Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind.

Of all affliction taught a lover yet, 'Tis true the hardest science to forget.

The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

I have more zeal than wit.

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.

What riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes. What more? Meat, clothes, and fire. Is this too little?

I suspect anyway that the important things we learn we never remember because they become a part of us, we absorb them...we don't absorb multiplication tables.

To dazzle let the vain design, To raise the thought and touch the heart, be thine!

Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published everyday, like those of a baseball player.

I know that I have the potential. And the opportunities. But I don't say: "I want to win the Australian Open in 2018." It doesn't work that way.

The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life.

Nor in the critic let the man be lost.

The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd ev'ry shade.

Nothing can inspire religious duty or animation but religion.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

The hog that ploughs not, not obeys thy call, Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

Silence! coeval with eternity! thou wert ere Nature's self began to be; thine was the sway ere heaven was formed on earth, ere fruitful thought conceived creation's birth.

Satire or sense, alas! Can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

A trend is a trend is a trend. But the question is, will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?

Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd and make the learned smile.

Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.

Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call; She comes unlooked for, if she comes at all .

'Twas drink made me fall in love, And love made me run into debt, And though I have struggled and struggled and strove, I cannot get out of them yet.

I have been in love, and in debt, and in drink, this many and many a year.

Nothing comes sailing by itself.

Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare They fall, and leave their little lives in air.

A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state.

Let sinful bachelors their woes deplore; full well they merit all they feel, and more: unaw by precepts, human or divine, like birds and beasts, promiscuously they join.

In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fixed, 'tis fixed as in a frost.

The young disease, that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

Cabbage soup and barley. They're Russia's national food. Both excellent in their way, but a shade monotonous.

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,-health, peace, and competence.

Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.

A man who's active and incisive can yet keep nail-care much in mind: why fight what's known to be decisive? Custom is despot of mankind.

There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit.

My favorite sports movies, I like 'Remember the Titans' and 'Hoosiers' Jimmy Chitwood, from the corner.

A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury, for he has it then in his power to make himself superior to the other by forgiving it.

I was not born for courts and great affairs, but I pay my debts, believe and say my prayers.

Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, who never mentions hell to ears polite.

A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of.

Consult the genius of the place, that paints as you plant, and as you work.

A long, exact, and serious comedy; In every scene some moral let it teach, And, if it can, at once both please and preach.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.