William Cullen Bryant Quotes

“Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.”

— William Cullen Bryant

“And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;”

— William Cullen Bryant

“So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Thanatopsis”

— William Cullen Bryant

“And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood.”

— William Cullen Bryant

“Weep not that the world changes -did it keep a stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.”

— William Cullen Bryant

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.

— William Cullen Bryant

“All at once
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,
And I am in the wilderness alone.”

— William Cullen Bryant

The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art.

— William Cullen Bryant

“A beautiful city is Richmond, seated on the hills that overlook the James River. The dwellings have a pleasant appearance, often standing by themselves in the midst of gardens. In front of several, I saw large magnolias, their dark, glazed leaves glittering in the March sunshine.”

— William Cullen Bryant

I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States, travelling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step.

— William Cullen Bryant

“A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.”

— William Cullen Bryant

Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious, open grounds of London. I doubt, in fact, whether any person fully comprehends their extent, from any of the ordinary descriptions of them, until he has seen them or tried to walk over them.

— William Cullen Bryant

“The Parisian has his amusements as regularly as his meals, the theatre, music, the dance, a walk in the Tuilleries, a refection in the cafe, to which ladies resort as commonly as the other sex. Perpetual business, perpetual labor, is a thing of which he seems to have no idea.”

— William Cullen Bryant