Alas Quotes - Page 21

• The earth with yellow pearsAnd overgrown with roses wildUpon the pond is bent,And swans divine,With kisses drunkYou drop your headsIn the sublimely sobering water.But where, with winter come, am ITo find, alas, the floweres, and whereThe sunshineAnd the shadow of the world?Cold the walls standAnd the wordless, in the windThe weathercocks are rattling.

  Friedrich Holderlin

  Wall, Kissing, Winter

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• Alas, alas, that ever love was sin! I ever followed natural inclination Under the power of my constellation And was unable to deny, in truth, My chamber of Venus to a likely youth.

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  Venus, Youth, Sin

  Geoffrey Chaucer (1959). “The Canterbury Tales”

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• Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only! Balanced on God's strong shoulders, Good and Evil flap together like two mighty wings and lift him high.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Strong, Wings, Two

  Nikos Kazantzakis (1958). “the Odyssey a Modern Sequel”

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• Alas! how many souls there are full of self, and yet desirous of doing good and serving God, but in such a way as to suit themselves; who desire to impose rules upon God as to His manner of drawing them to Himself. They want to serve and possess Him, but they are not willing to be possessed by Him.

  Francois Fenelon

  Self, Drawing, Soul

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• The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.

  Arthur Symons

  Sunset, Autumn, Air

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• Virtue its own reward? Alas! And what a poor one as a rule! Be virtuous and life will pass Like one long term of Sunday School.

  Harry Graham

  School, Sunday, Long

  Harry Graham (2016). “Perverted Proverbs: A Manual of Immorals for the Many”, p.9, The Floating Press

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• I can read more languages than I speak! I speak French and Italian - not very well, alas, but I can get by. I read German and Spanish. I can read Latin (I did a lot of Latin at school.) I'm afraid I do not speak any African languages, although I can understand a little bit of the Zulu-related languages, but only a tiny bit.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Latin, School, Italian

  "National Book Festival: 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' Novelist Alexander McCall Smith". Live Q&A, www.washingtonpost.com. September 19, 2008.

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• In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst.

  Peter Greenaway

  Cameras, Directors, Firsts

  Zoetrope All-Story, Volume 5, No. 1., Spring 2001.

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• To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.

  Thomas Malthus

  Men, Misery, Recurrence

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.48, eKitap Projesi

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• Watercolour is not especially difficult, but I must warn you to steer clear of those pretty English watercolourists, so skilful and alas so weak, and so often too truthful.

  Camille Pissarro

  Truthful, Weak, Difficult

  1883 Letter to his son Lucien, Jul.

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• Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Running, Long, Political

  Alexander McCall Smith (2010). “The Unbearable Lightness of Scones”, p.129, Anchor

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• Behold, O Lord, that I am indignant with myself, for my senseless, profitless, hurtful, perilous passions; that I loathe myself, for these inordinate, unseemly, deformed, false, shameful, disgraceful passions; that my confusion is daily before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me. Alas! woe, woe! O me, how long?

  Lancelot Andrewes

  Passion, Long, Confusion

  Lancelot Andrewes (bp. of Winchester.) (1883). “The private devotions of Lancelot Andrewes”

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• Behold a silly tender babe,In freezing winter night,In homely manger trembling lies;Alas! a piteous sight.

  Robert Southwell

  Lying, Silly, Winter

  Saint Robert Southwell, William Joseph Walter (1817). “St. Peter's Complaint: And Other Poems”, p.47

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