R. A. Butler Quotes

Time can but make her beauty over again.

What the world's million lips are searching for, must be substantial somewhere.

For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.

Education is not about filling a pail, it's about lighting a fire.

The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.

Education is not filling

How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress ?

In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.

Laughter not time destroyed my voice And put that crack in it, And when the moon's pot-bellied I get a laughing fit.

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.

Because the priest must have like every dog his day Or keep us all awake with baying at the moon, We and our dolls being but the world were best away.

The old priest Peter Gilligan Was weary night and day; For half his flock were in their beds, Or under green sods lay.

While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity.

While Michael Angelo's Sistine roof, His "Morning" and his "Night" disclose How sinew that has been pulled tight, Or it may be loosened in repose, Can rule by supernatural right Yet be but sinew.

Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night.

My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.

Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.

My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd. "This Land of Saints," and then as the applause died out, "Of plaster Saints;" his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.

even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.

Though logic-choppers rule the town, And every man and maid and boy Has marked a distant object down, An aimless joy is a pure joy.

For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget.

And God would bid His warfare cease, Saying all things were well; And softly make a rosy peace, A peace of Heaven with Hell.

Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.

Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.

I thought of rhyme alone, For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble And make the daylight sweet once more.

O heart, be at peace, because Nor knave nor dolt can break What's not for their applause, Being for a woman's sake.

Man has created death.

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

I--though heart might find relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb--play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

Because this age and the next age Engender in the ditch, No man can know a happy man From any passing wretch, If Folly link with Elegance No man knows which is which.

I thought it out this very day, Noon upon the clock, A man may put pretence away Who leans upon a stick, May sing, and sing until he drop, Whether to maid or hag.

I have nothing but the embittered sun; Banished heroic mother moon and vanished, And now that I have come to fifty years I must endure the timid sun.

Though I have many words, What woman's satisfied, I am no longer faint Because at her side? O who could have foretold That the heart grows old?

Odor of blood when Christ was slain Made all Platonic tolerance vain And vain all Doric discipline.

Who mocks at music mocks at love.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.

Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.

What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?

The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

I have read somewhere that in the Emperor's palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.

Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it.

What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?

For how can you compete Being honour bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbour's eyes?

The Father and His angelic hierarchy That made the magnitude and glory there Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye.

Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.