Richard Chenevix Trench Quotes & Sayings

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning. — Richard Chenevix Trench

A good ship is never tested in calm waters. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Language is the close-fitting dress of thought. — Richard Chenevix Trench

The present is only intelligible in the light of the past. — Richard Chenevix Trench

If we with earnest effort could succeed To make our life one long, connected prayer, As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are; If, never leaving Thee, we have no need Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into Thy presence, but continued there Like angels standing on the highest stair Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed! — Richard Chenevix Trench

Sin may be clasped so close, we cannot see its face. — Richard Chenevix Trench

We speak of persons as jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. A gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as being born under the planet Saturn, who was considered to make those who owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself. — Richard Chenevix Trench

There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed,Not all who fail have therefor worked in vain.There is no failure for the good and brave. — Richard Chenevix Trench

None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it. — Richard Chenevix Trench

As shadows attend substances, so words follow upon things. — Richard Chenevix Trench

All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake, Because in us keen longings they awake. — Richard Chenevix Trench

We live not in our moments or our years:
The present we fling from us like the rind
Of some sweet future, which we after find
Bitter to taste. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth; Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth. — Richard Chenevix Trench

The love of our own language, what is it, in fact, but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction? — Richard Chenevix Trench

Oh seize the instant time; you never will
With water once passed by impel the mill. — Richard Chenevix Trench

The sin of pride is the sin of sins; in which all subsequent sins are included, as in their germ; they are but the unfolding of this one. — Richard Chenevix Trench

... for you will never, I trust, disconnect what you may yourselves be learning from the hope and prospect of being enabled thereby to teach others more effectually. If you do, and your studies in this way become a selfish thing, if you are content to leave them barren of all profit to others, of this you may be sure, that in the end they will prove not less barren of profit to yourselves. In one noble line Chaucer has characterized the true scholar:- "And gladly would he learn and gladly teach." Resolve that in the spirit of this line you will work and live. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Common sense meant once something very different from that plain wisdom, the common heritage of men, which we now call by this name. — Richard Chenevix Trench

For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Speak but little and well, if you would be esteemed as a man of merit. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Best friends might loathe us, if what things perverse we know of our own selves they also knew. — Richard Chenevix Trench

We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others - that we are not always strong, That we are ever overborne with care, That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? — Richard Chenevix Trench

The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good; and many a good book has remained unwritten ... because there floated before the mind's eye the ideal of a better or a best. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason. — Richard Chenevix Trench

Prayer is not getting man's will done in heaven, but getting God's will done on earth. It is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of God's willingness. — Richard Chenevix Trench