Misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case. [ Cowper ]

Oh, if there is one thing above the rest
Written in Wisdom - if there is a word
That I would trace as with a pen of fire
Upon the unsullied temper of a child —
If there is anything that keeps the mind
Open to angel visits, and repels
The ministry of ill - It is Love. [ N. P. Willis ]

I will trace the principal heads of events. [ Virgil ]

In those sunk eyes the grief of years I trace.
And sorrow seems acquainted with that face. [ Ickell ]

Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace.
Secret joys and secret smiles. Little pretty infant wiles. [ William Blake ]

There's beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes
Can trace it 'midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise. [ Mrs. Hemans ]

Ye may trace my step over the wakening earth by the winds which tell of the violet's birth. [ Mrs. Hemans ]

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face. [ Longfellow ]

Everything that happens to us leaves some trace behind; everything contributes imperceptibly to make us what we are. [ Goethe ]

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. [ George Eliot ]

Have something to tell, and tell it clearly, simply, without a trace of affectation or conscious effort at fine writing. I should advise the study of examples in this perfection of art. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

In the germ, when the first trace of life begins to stir, music is the nurse of the soul; it murmurs in the ear, and the child sleeps; the tones are companions of his dreams - they are the world in which he lives. [ Bettina von Arnim ]

Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears, and cannot trace the source. Is it the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of another world, like music? [ Miss L. E. Landon ]

Thinkers who trace systems of philosophy are merely impelled by an innate instinct; they know that their precepts, however excellent, are not suitable to the majority: the wisdom may be admired by many, but few will follow the principles. [ De Finod ]

It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business. [ Seneca ]

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life. [ Lord Greville ]