We look before and after,
And sigh for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those
that tell of saddest thought [ Shelley ]

Do you never think what wondrous beings these?
Do you never think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man ever caught! [ Longfellow ]

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts. [ Shelley ]

In argument similes are like songs in love; they much describe; they nothing prove. [ Prior ]

Lyrical poetry is much the same in every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time. [ Heine ]

Music was a thing of the soul; a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea; a strange bird singing the songs of another shore. [ J. G. Holland ]

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs. [ Emerson ]

It's a long stretch between that first birthday speech and this one. That was my cradle-song; and this is my swan-song, I suppose. I am used to swan-songs; I have sung them several times. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. [ Emerson ]

What we call genius may, perhaps, in more strict propriety, be described as the spirit of discovery. Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time. It is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes. For this reason it is called a seer, and hence its songs have been prophecies. [ Simms ]

A beau is one who arranges his curled locks gracefully, who ever smells of balm, and cinnamon; who hums the songs of the Nile, and Cadiz; who throws his sleek arms into various attitudes; who idles away the whole day among the chairs of the ladies and is ever whispering into some one's ear; who reads little billets-doux from this quarter and that, and writes them in return; who avoids ruffling his dress by contact with his neighbors sleeve, who knows with whom everybody is in love; who flutters from feast to feast, who can recount exactly the pedigree of Hirpinus. What do you tell me? is this a beau, Cotilus? Then a beau, Cotilus, is a very trifling thing. [ Martial ]