Explore Quotations, Proverbs & Sayings

«Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather»

«Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, / Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.»

«GRAPE, n.Hail noble fruit! --by Homer sung, Anacreon and Khayyam; Thy praise is ever on the tongue Of better men than I am.The lyre in my hand has never swept, The song I cannot offer: My humbler service pray accept -- I'll help to kill the scoffer.The water-drinkers and the cranks Who load their skins with liquor -- I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks And tap them with my sticker.Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools When e'er we let the wine rest. Here's death to Prohibition's fools, And every kind of vine-pest! --Jamrach Holobom»

«LYRE, n. An ancient instrument of torture. The word is now used in a figurative sense to denote the poetic faculty, as in the following fiery lines of our great poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:I sit astride Parnassus with my lyre, And pick with care the disobedient wire. That stupid shepherd lolling on his crook With deaf attention scarcely deigns to look. I bide my time, and it shall come at length, When, with a Titan's energy and strength, I'll grab a fistful of the strings, and O, The word shall suffer when I let them go! --Farquharson Harris»

«God of the golden bow, / And of the golden lyre, / And of the golden hair, / And of the golden fire, / Charioteer / Of the patient year, / Where - where slept thine ire?»

«You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?»

«What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, or, if he is merely a boxer, only his muscle? On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alert to the heartrending, burning, or happy events in the world, molding himself in their likeness.»