Spirits

Famous quotes containing the word spirits:

    No, no; but as in my idolatry
    I said to all my profane mistresses,
    Beauty, of pity, foulness only is
    A sign of rigour: so I say to thee,
    To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign’d,
    This beauteous form assures a piteous mind.
    John Donne (1572–1631)

    But seldom the laurel wreath is seen
    Unmixed with pensive pansies dark;
    There’s a light and a shadow on every man
    Who at last attains his lifted mark—
    Nursing through night the ethereal spark.
    Elate he never can be;
    He feels that spirits which glad had hailed his worth,
    Sleep in oblivion.—The shark
    Glides white through the phosphorus sea.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)