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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Sir Edwin Arnold

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Sir Edwin Arnold

Govern the lips as they were palace-doors, the king within; / Tranquil and fair and courteous be all words which from that presence win.

“I” (self-love) would have the world say “I,” / And all things perish so if she endure.

If sorrow falls, / Take comfort still in deeming there may be / A way to peace on earth by woes of ours.

Man, who lives to die, dies to live well, / So if he guide his ways by blamelessness / And earnest will to hinder not, but help, / All things both great and small which suffer life.

Note how the falcon starts at every sight, / New from his hood, but what a quiet eye / Cometh of freedom.

Pity and need make all flesh kin. There is no caste in blood / Which runneth of one hue; nor caste in tears, which trickle salt with all.

Pity makes the world / Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.

Seeking nothing, he gains all; foregoing self, the universe grows “I.”

Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse; clear minds, clean bodies, need no Sôma juice.

Sorrow is shadow to life, moving where life doth move.

The dewdrop and the star shine sisterly, / Globing together in the common work.

The grief which all hearts share grows less for one.

The lake’s silver dulls with driving clouds.

The string o’erstretched breaks, and the music flies; / The string o’erslack is dumb, and music dies; / Tune us the sitar neither low nor high.

There is no grief like hate! no pains like passions! no deceit like sense! Enter the path! far hath he gone whose foot treads down one fond offence.

’Twere all as good to ease one beast of grief, / As sit and watch the sorrows of the world / In yonder caverns with the priests who pray.

What good I see humbly I seek to do, / And live obedient to the law, in trust / That what will come, and must come, shall come well.

Within yourselves deliverance must be sought; / Each man his prison makes.