John Armstrong Quotes & Sayings

How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose; on him the balmy dews Of Sleep with double nutriment descend. — John Armstrong

You don't ask a juggler which ball is highest in priority. Success is to do it all. — John Armstrong

Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind supports the body too. — John Armstrong

We know great Nature's pow'r, Mother of things, whose vast unbounded sway From the deep centre all around extends Wide to the flaming barriers of the world. We feel her power; we strive not to repress (Vainly repress'd, or to deformity) Her lawful growth: ours be the task alone To check her rude excrescencies, to prune Her wanton overgrowth, and where she strays In uncouth shapes, to lead her gently back, With prudent hand, to form and better use. — John Armstrong

If from thy secret bed Of luxury unbidden offspring rise, Let them be kindly welcom'd to the day. — John Armstrong

We need to be free if we are to love. — John Armstrong

For wisest ends this universal Power Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life Subsists, by which we only live, all life Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd. Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct, That flame for propagation, soon would roll A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven. — John Armstrong

There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust. — John Armstrong

It is not suffering as such that makes someone appreciate love, it is only when suffering pierces our vanity - which happens when we do not blame someone else for our pain - that it awakens a deeper respect for love. — John Armstrong

There is, they say, (and I believe there is),
A spark within us of th' immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven;
Its native seat, and mixes with the gods. — John Armstrong

When the tribal groups of december trade
Seated in the figure of crocodile
And songs are sung and deals discussed, are made
Real. All ... For more than one reason they smile.
These codes are writ in secret, feeling fine
To keep what's private to my self since we
All must face our maker in our own ryhme
And reasons for being ( from regrets) free
So let the memory of your glory
Be the tenderness heartfelt love starkly
In the sky of my mind vast and pretty
Evermore glittering simplicity
Where in the truth of country grows sober
And sunshines through fog to radiate wonder — John Armstrong

The athletic fool, to whom what heaven denied of soul, is well compensated in limbs. — John Armstrong

What avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serence, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. — John Armstrong

People are more slothful than timid. Their greatest fear is the heavy burden that uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them. — John Armstrong

The boy may wrestle, when Night
working Fancy steals him to the arms Of nymph oft wish'd awake, and, 'mid the rage Of the soft tumult, ev'ry turgid cell Spontaneous disembogues its lucid store, Bland and of azure tinct. — John Armstrong

Sincerity is only as good as what we are sincere about. — John Armstrong

Tis not for mortals always to be blest. — John Armstrong

Autumn ripens in the summer's ray. — John Armstrong

How sickly grow, How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope To feel, the genial vigor of the sun! — John Armstrong

Ye generous maids, revenge your sex's wrong; Let not the mean destroyer e'er approach Your sacred charms. Now muster all your pride, Contempt and scorn, that, shot from Beauty's eye, Confounds the mighty impudent, and smites The front unknown to shame. — John Armstrong

A relationship does not start the day two people meet; it starts in the childhood of each partner. For it is long before they meet that the template of their relationship is established. — John Armstrong

Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, expels diseases, softens every pain. — John Armstrong

Imagination need not stand as an obstacle to clear-sighted perception; on the contrary, it can be a prerequisite for recognition of the less obvious aspects of what is really there. — John Armstrong

Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd;
Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave,
Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool.
But for one end, one much-neglected use,
Are riches worth your care; (for nature's wants
Are few, and without opulence supplied;)
This noble end is, to produce the soul;
To show the virtues in their fairest light;
To make humanity the minister
Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast
The generous luxury the gods enjoy. — John Armstrong

This is the internal tragedy of love. If love is successful, if our love is returned and develops into a relationship, the person we are with must turn out to be other than we imagined them to be. Love craves closeness, and closeness always brings us face to face with something other than we expected. — John Armstrong

What Nature bids is good, is wise, and faultless we obey. — John Armstrong

Love can sometimes rise up like a desperate cry from a neglected part of oneself which takes a long view but which is submerged by the presence of strident wants. — John Armstrong

Money can purchase the symbols but not the causes of serenity and buoyancy. In a straightforward way we must agree that money cannot buy happiness. — John Armstrong

To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of th'harmonious frame. — John Armstrong

Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight. — John Armstrong

Hope is the first thing to take some sort of action. — John Armstrong

This is the most effective way: let the growing soul look at life with the question: 'What have you truly loved? What has drawn you upward, mastered and blessed you? — John Armstrong

When you're doing wrong, you're gonna think wrong. — John Armstrong

The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys To every particle that moves or lives. — John Armstrong

Your friends avoid you, brutishly transform'd
They hardly know you, or if one remains
To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven. — John Armstrong

Compatibility, on this view, is an achievement of love, not a precondition for love. — John Armstrong

This restless world
Is full of chances, which by habit's power
To learn to bear is easier than to shun. — John Armstrong

For want of timely care Millions have died of medicable wounds. — John Armstrong

One's relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one's sense of identity, it shapes one's attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money. — John Armstrong

He knows enough, the mariner, who knows
Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil,
What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in the Ionian wave;
Whence those impetuous currents in the main
Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why
The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure
As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven. — John Armstrong

Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, Is the best gift of Heaven: a happiness That even above the smiles and frowns of fate Exalts great Nature's favourites: a wealth That ne'er encumbers, nor can be transferr'd. — John Armstrong

Our greatest good, and what we least can spare,
Is hope: the last of all our evils, fear. — John Armstrong

Imagination paints a charming view of the future, conveniently adapted to the demands of our current emotion. — John Armstrong

The most beautiful form of compromise is forgiveness. — John Armstrong

Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine,
Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine.
Better be born with taste to little rent
Than the dull monarch of a continent;
Without this bounty which the gods bestow,
Can Fortune make one favorite happy?
No. — John Armstrong

What is given by nature is not necessarily good, what is achieved by artifice is not necessarily worthless. — John Armstrong

Virtue and sense are one; and, trust me, still A faithless heart betrays the head unsound. — John Armstrong

Toil, and be strong; by toil the flaccid nerves
Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone:
The greener juices are by toil subdued,
Mellow'd, and subtilis'd; the vapid old
Expell'd, and all the rancor of the blood. — John Armstrong

Good native Taste, tho' rude, is seldom wrong,
Be it in music, painting, or in song:
But this, as well as other faculties,
Improves with age and ripens by degrees. — John Armstrong

Tis not too late to-morrow to be brave. — John Armstrong

Much had he read, Much more had he seen; he studied from the life, And in th' original perus'd mankind. — John Armstrong

Ye youths and virgins, when your generous blood Has drunk the warmth of fifteen summers, now The loves invite; now to new rapture wakes The finish'd sense: while stung with keen desire The madd'ning boy his bashful fetters bursts; And, urg'd with secret flames, the riper maid, Conscious and shy, betrays her smarting breast. — John Armstrong

You can't help people that don't want to be helped. — John Armstrong

Sometimes pantheists will use the term "pandeism" to underscore that they share with the deists the idea that God is not a personal God who desires to be worshipped. — John Armstrong

For pale and trembling anger rushes in
With faltering speech, and eyes that wildly stare,
Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas,
Desperate and armed with more than human strength. — John Armstrong

Then love of pleasure sways each heart, and we From that no more than from ourselves can fly. Blameless when govern'd well. But where it errs Extravagant, and wildly leads to ill, Public or private, there its curbing pow'r Cool reason must exert. — John Armstrong

Impious! forbear thus the first general hail. To disappoint, Increase and multiply, To shed thy blossoms thro' the desert air, And sow thy perish'd offspring in the winds. — John Armstrong

Ye who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind, Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickening, and the living world Exhal'd, to sully heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality. — John Armstrong

But mostly what we think of as the 'meaning' of life concerns the style of the private autobiography we each write and which records how we 'see' ourselves. Whether this autobiography reads as a narrative of progress in which difficulties are transcended, or is chaotic, is the test of whether one's life seems to be meaningful or not. Meaning is something we find, or fail to find, as we follow through this project. We can see how love figures here: love is a major theme, but how we see our experience of love depends upon our general thinking. If, for example, we work with extremely high expectations of love we impose a tragic style upon our self-perceptions: for our experience of love will always be seen under an aspect of failure - failure focused upon ourselves or others. Hence the more subtle our thinking about love, the more intelligently we discriminate ideals from reality, the more interesting our autobiography becomes. — John Armstrong