The Holmes Birthday Book

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1889 - 407 pages

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Page 4 - I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Page 32 - I saw him once before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound, As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. They say that in his prime, Ere the...
Page 50 - Sun of our life, thy quickening ray Sheds on our path the glow of day; Star of our hope, thy softened light Cheers the long watches of the night.
Page 316 - LITTLE I ask ; my wants are few ; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own ; — And close at hand is such a one, in yonder street that fronts the sun. Plain food is quite enough for me ; Three courses are as good as ten ; — If .Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three.
Page 342 - Tic-tac ! tic-tac ! go the wheels of thought ; our will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; sleep cannot still them ; madness only makes them go faster ; death alone can break into the case, and, seiz> ing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
Page 342 - O Love Divine, that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earthborn care, We smile at pain while Thou art near 1 Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near...
Page 186 - Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ; " and so, if I might be judge, " God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
Page 132 - CLEAR the brown path, to meet his coulter's gleam ! Lo ! on he comes, behind his smoking team, With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunburnt brow, The lord of earth, the hero of the plough...
Page 182 - Hnw they surged above the breastwork, as a sea breaks over a deck ; How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn-out men retreated, With their powder-horns all emptied, like the swimmers from a wreck...
Page 2 - Deal gently with us, ye who read ! Our largest hope is unfulfilled, — The promise still outruns the deed, — The tower, but not the spire, we build. Our whitest pearl we never find ; Our ripest fruit we never reach ; The flowering moments of the mind Drop half their petals in our speech.

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