Quotes by William White

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts...There’s fennel for you, and columbines; there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end,”

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our teeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurour and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man!””

“the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.””

“India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them.””

“ROSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care; While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand. Turn if you may from battles never done, I call, as they go by me one by one, Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace, For him who hears love sing and never cease, Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade: But gather all for whom no love hath made A woven silence, or but came to cast A song into the air, and singing past To smile on the pale dawn; and gather you Who have sought more than is in rain or dew Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth, Or sighs amid the wandering starry mirth, Or comes in laughter from the sea’s sad lips; And wage God’s battles in the long grey ships. The sad, the lonely, the insatiable, To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell; God’s bell has claimed them by the little cry Of their sad hearts, that may not live nor die. Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea. Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.The Sweet Far Thing””

“She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.””

“Both read the Bible day and night,But thou read'st black where I read white.””

“Come away, come away, Death,And in sad cypress let me be laid;Fly away, fly away, breath,I am slain by a fair cruel maid.My shroud of white stuck all with yew, O prepare it!My part of death no one so true did share it.Not a flower, not a flower sweet,On my black coffin let there be strewn:Not a friend, not a friend greetMy poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me O whereSad true lover never find my grave, to weep there!””

“O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head, as is a winged messenger of heavenUnto the white-upturned wond'ring eyesOf mortals fall back to gaze on him.””

“The crow wished everything was black, the Owl, that everything was white.””