All that's bright must fade -
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest. [ Moore ]

Candor is the brightest gem of criticism. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Affliction is the good man's shining scene;
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray,
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man. [ Young ]

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;
Or, ravished with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame! [ Pope ]

Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.
For there thy habitation is the Heart -
The Heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned -
To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their Martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. [ Byron ]

His genius quite obscured the brightest ray
Of human thought, as Sol's effulgent beams
At morn's approach, extinguished all the stars. [ R. Wynne ]

The rose is fairest when it is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;
The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew,
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. [ William Shakespeare ]

The brightest of all things,, the sun, hath its spots. [ Proverb ]

Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set. [ Colton ]

His worth shines forth the brightest who in hope always confides; the abject soul despairs. [ Euripides ]

Bravery is a cheap and vulgar quality, of which the brightest instances are frequently found in the lowest savage. [ Chatfield ]

Lips become compressed and drawn with anxious thought, and eyes the brightest are quenched of their fires by many tears. [ S. Lover ]

The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried and smelted and polished and glorified through the furnace of tribulation. [ Chapin ]

Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty; as where the sun is brightest the shade is deepest. [ Lander ]

Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm. [ Colton ]

Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast. [ Jeremy Collier ]

Who can fathom the depth of a mother's love! No friendship so pure, so devoted; the wild storm of adversity and the bright sunshine of prosperity are all alike to her; however unworthy we may be of that affection, a mother never ceases to love her erring child. Often, when alone, as we gaze up to the starry heaven, can we in imagination catch a glimpse of the angels around the great white throne, and among the brightest and fairest of them all is our sweet mother, ever beckoning us onward and upward to her celestial home. [ R. Smith ]