Philip James Bailey Quotes & Sayings

#1. Love is the art of hearts, and heart or arts.

Philip James Bailey

#2. Error is worse than ignorance.

Philip James Bailey

#3. I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts,
Each one of which down hurls me to the ground.

Philip James Bailey

#4. Men might be better if we better deemed of them.

Philip James Bailey

#5. For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed, So poets live upon the living light.

Philip James Bailey

#6. The heart is its own Fate.

Philip James Bailey

#7. Necessity, like electricity, is in ourselves and all things, and no more without us than within us.

Philip James Bailey

#8. Dreams are rudiments
Of the great state to come. We dream what is
About to happen.

Philip James Bailey

#9. Death is another life.

Philip James Bailey

#10. Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.

Philip James Bailey

#11. The sole equality on earth is death.

Philip James Bailey

#12. Any heart turned Godward feels more joyIn one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raisedBy all the feasts of earth since its foundation.

Philip James Bailey

#13. Love spends his all, and still hath store.

Philip James Bailey

#14. Hell is more bearable than nothingness.

Philip James Bailey

#15. It matters not how long we live but how.

Philip James Bailey

#16. Life's but a means unto an end, that end,
Beginning, mean, and end to all things
God.

Philip James Bailey

#17. As the master so the valet.

Philip James Bailey

#18. The temples perish, but the God still lives.

Philip James Bailey

#19. Tis light translateth night; 'tis inspiration Expounds experience; 'tis the west explains The east; 'tis time unfolds Eternity.

Philip James Bailey

#20. Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell.

Philip James Bailey

#21. England! my country, great and free! Heart of the world, I leap to thee!

Philip James Bailey

#22. Star canto: star speaks light, and world to world
Repeats the passage of the universe
To God; the name of Christ
the one great word
Well worth all languages in earth or heaven.

Philip James Bailey

#23. Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

Philip James Bailey

#24. How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul!

Philip James Bailey

#25. Leave the poor Some time for self-improvement. Let them not Be forced to grind the bones out of their arms For bread, but have some space to think and feel Like moral and immortal creatures.

Philip James Bailey

#26. Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which
Men are and ought to be accountable,
If not to Thee, to those they influence.

Philip James Bailey

#27. Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can.

Philip James Bailey

#28. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.

Philip James Bailey

#29. Evil then results from imperfection.

Philip James Bailey

#30. All are of the race of God, and have in themselves good.

Philip James Bailey

#31. My favoured temple is an humble heart.

Philip James Bailey

#32. When night hath set her silver lamp high, Then is the time for study.

Philip James Bailey

#33. Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses.

Philip James Bailey

#34. It is much less what we do than what we think, which fits us for the future.

Philip James Bailey

#35. Lowliness is the base of every virtue, And he who goes the lowest builds the safest.

Philip James Bailey

#36. For ivy climbs the crumbling hall To decorate decay.

Philip James Bailey

#37. See the gold sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss.

Philip James Bailey

#38. True faith nor biddeth nor abideth form,
The bended knee, the eye uplift; is all
Which men need render; all which God can bear.
What to the faith are forms? A passing speck,
A crow upon the sky.

Philip James Bailey

#39. The value of a thought cannot be told.

Philip James Bailey

#40. Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon It works, on e'er self-transmutative form, Common to now the living, now the dead.

Philip James Bailey

#41. Poetry is itself a thing of God;
He made his prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie do we become
Like God in love and power,-under-makers.

Philip James Bailey

#42. Thou art a woman,
And that is saying the best and worst of thee.

Philip James Bailey

#43. Every believer is God's miracle.

Philip James Bailey

#44. The course of Nature seems a course of Death, And nothingness the whole substantial thing.

Philip James Bailey

#45. He is a fool who is not for love and beauty. I speak unto the young, for I am of them and always shall be.

Philip James Bailey

#46. Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

Philip James Bailey

#47. Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.

Philip James Bailey

#48. Stars which stand as thick as dewdrops on the field of heaven.

Philip James Bailey

#49. It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel.

Philip James Bailey

#50. We love and live in power; it is the spirit's end. Mind must subdue; to conquer is its life.

Philip James Bailey

#51. Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more.

Philip James Bailey

#52. Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life But needs it and may learn.

Philip James Bailey

#53. Burn to be great, Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone. The plains are everlasting as the hills, The bard cannot have two pursuits; aught else Comes on the mind with the like shock as though Two worlds had gone to war, and met in air.

Philip James Bailey

#54. Kindness is wisdom.

Philip James Bailey

#55. Blest is he whose heart is the home of the great dead and their great thoughts.

Philip James Bailey

#56. The world is a great poem, and the world's
The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts.

Philip James Bailey

#57. The ground of all great thoughts is sadness.

Philip James Bailey

#58. Lips like rosebuds peeping out of snow.

Philip James Bailey

#59. Where imperfection ceaseth, heaven begins.

Philip James Bailey

#60. The worst way to improve the world is to condemn it.

Philip James Bailey

#61. He who has most of heart knows most of sorrow.

Philip James Bailey

#62. None but God can fill the perfect whole.

Philip James Bailey

#63. The dew, 'Tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy.

Philip James Bailey

#64. Walk boldly and wisely ... There is a hand above that will help you on.

Philip James Bailey

#65. We live not to ourselves, our work is life.

Philip James Bailey

#66. Could I love less, I should be happier now.

Philip James Bailey

#67. Obey thy genius, for a minister it is unto the throne of fate. Draw to thy soul, and centralize the rays which are around of the Divinity.

Philip James Bailey

#68. When I forget that the stars shine in air
When I forget that beauty is in stars
When I forget that love with beauty is
Will I forget thee: till then all things else.

Philip James Bailey

#69. Look on the bee upon the wing 'mong flowers;
How brave, how bright his life! then mark, him hiv'd,
Cramp'd, cringing in his self-built, social cell,
Thus it is in the world-hive; most where men
Lie deep in cities as in drifts.

Philip James Bailey

#70. Death is the universal salt of states; Blood is the base of all things
law and war.

Philip James Bailey

#71. Life is less than nothing without love.

Philip James Bailey

#72. Blessings star forth forever; but a curse is like a cloud, it passes.

Philip James Bailey

#73. We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand.

Philip James Bailey

#74. Evil is limited. One cannot form
A scheme for universal evil.

Philip James Bailey

#75. What are ye orbs? The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?

Philip James Bailey

#76. Surely the stars are images of love.

Philip James Bailey

#77. Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

Philip James Bailey

#78. The strongest passion which I have is honor.

Philip James Bailey

#79. Death, thou art infinite; it is life is little.

Philip James Bailey

#80. The long days are no happier than the short ones.

Philip James Bailey

#81. Nature means Necessity.

Philip James Bailey

#82. And these are joys, like beauty, but skin deep.

Philip James Bailey

#83. Mind and night will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers.

Philip James Bailey

#84. Dear Lord, our God and Saviour! for Thy gifts
The world were poor in thanks, though every soul
Were to do nought but breathe them, every blade
Of grass, and every atomie of earth
To utter it like dew.

Philip James Bailey

#85. We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Philip James Bailey

#86. Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.

Philip James Bailey

#87. There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.

Philip James Bailey

#88. Man is one; and he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel, with a gigantic throb athwart the sea, each other's rights and wrongs; thus are we men.

Philip James Bailey

#89. Could we but think with the intensity we love with, we might do great things.

Philip James Bailey

#90. Sorrow is a stone that crushes a single bearer to the ground, while two are able to carry it with ease.

Philip James Bailey

#91. Ah, nothing comes to us too soon but sorrow.

Philip James Bailey

#92. One thought settles a life, an immortality.

Philip James Bailey

#93. The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance.

Philip James Bailey