Richard Chenevix Trench

“Evil is only the slave of good.”

“Every word has a history.”

“Words are not things, but they are signs of things, and we can only get at the things through the signs.”

“Make thou my spirit pure and clear as are the frosty skies.”

“Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.”

“The little I have seen of the world and know of the history of mankind teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.”

“Language is the depository of the accumulated body of experience to which all former ages have contributed their part.”

“A word is a microcosm of human consciousness.”

“Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved.”

“This is the curse of every evil deed, that, propagating still, it brings forth evil.”

“A man's books are an index to his character.”

“We have not wings, we cannot soar; but we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.”

“Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.”

“To be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.”

“If we had loved the stars enough, we should have grown wings.”