Money refused loses its brightness. [ Proverb ]
What would the rose with all her pride be worth.
Were there no sun to call her brightness forth? [ Moore ]
They are the heritage that glorious minds
Bequeath unto the world! — a glittering store
Of gems, more precious far than those he finds
Who searches miser's hidden treasures over.
They are the light, the guiding star of youth.
Leading his spirit to the realms of thought,
Pointing the way to Virtue, Knowledge, Truth,
And teaching lessons, with deep wisdom fraught.
They cast strange beauty round our earthly dreams,
And mystic brightness over our daily lot;
They lead the soul afar to fairy scenes,
Where the world's under visions enter not;
They're deathless and immortal — ages pass away,
Yet still they speak, instruct, inspire, amidst decay! [ Emeline S. Smith ]
Labour is preferable to idleness, as brightness to rust. [ Plato ]
Grieve not that I die young.
Is it not well to pass away ere life has lost its brightness? [ Lady Flora Hastings ]
Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness. [ Plato ]
The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago.
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood.
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men.
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen. [ Bryant ]
Some women's faces are, in their brightness, a prophecy; and some, in their sadness, a history. [ Dickens ]
The eye that gazes upon the sun sees not the orb it looks upon, confounded by the excess of its brightness. [ Metastasio ]
Every one must have felt that a cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around. [ Sir John Lubbock ]
The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness. [ Percival ]
God has given us wit and flavour, and brightness and laughter, and perfumes to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl. [ Sydney Smith ]
Its brightness, mighty divinity! has a fleeting empire over the day, giving gladness to the fields, color to the flowers, the season of the loves, harmonious hour of wakening birds. [ Calderon ]
Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force. [ Colton ]
There is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles - that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith - be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support. [ Southey ]
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]
Wherever there is a sky above him and a world around him, the poet is in his place; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite longings and small acquirings; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed endeavours; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through eternity; and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since man first began to live. [ Carlyle ]
Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. [ Channing ]