Beguile Quotes & Sayings

41. The Means to attain Happy Life

MARTIAL, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The richesse left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind:

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthful life;
The household of continuance:

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom join'd with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress.

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night;
Contented with thine own estate
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might. — Henry Howard

I dragged my beaten body onto my feet, spat blood into the mangled dirt, and lifted my head to Mammon. "Do not let my human half beguile you." I echoed his words, almost to the letter. — Pippa DaCosta

Imagination is a glorious thing, Without imagination there would be no solace for our suffering, no wondrous creations, no stories to beguile us, and no magic... — Karen Wrighton

The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'll read enough
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that's myself.
Give me that glass and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds?
O flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity
Thou dost beguile me! — William Shakespeare

I am not merry, but I do beguile the thing I am by seeming otherwise. — William Shakespeare

She leaned forward, her gaze so intense that Helen wanted to look away. "And I love him more for it. Do you hear me? He was a good man when he went away to the Colonies. He came back an extraordinary man. So many think that bravery is a single act of valor in a field of battle - no forethought, no contemplation of the consequences. An act over in a second or a minute or two at most. What my brother has done, is doing now, is to live with his burden for years. He knows that he will spend the rest of his life with it. And he soldiers on." She sat back in her chair, her gaze still locked with Helen's. "That to my mind is what real bravery is."
-Sophia to Helen about Alistair. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Our blossoms of passion, gay and luxuriant flowers, are bright and full of fragrance, but they beguile us and lead us astray, and their odor is deadly. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, We Poets of the proud old lineage Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest. — James Elroy Flecker

To beguile the time, look like the time. — William Shakespeare

Whatever capacity she possesses to supernaturally beguile a human soul - and she possesses many - she liked his clear-sightedness too well, to blind him that way. — Clive Barker

Ever-new Joy is God. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the years, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness; He is seductive beyond thought of competition. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The Things that Cause a Quiet Life

My friend, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain,
The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;

The equal friend; no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule nor governance;
Without disease the healthy life;
The household of continuance;

The mean diet, no dainty fare;
True wisdom joined with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress;

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Content thyself with thine estate,
Neither wish death, nor fear his might. — Henry Howard

Sensuality relates to how we can move, shake, and beguile our (desired) beloved into a deeper sense of communion. It's a well-timed wink, the hug of cashmere on subtle curves, or the undulation of aromatherapy for sensual living sensuality and our senses hips on a dance floor. It's salacious confidence seen in the way we hold ourselves in our bodies and in our lives. — Elana Millman

But she just tried to push the blame off onto the serpent: "The woman said, "the serpent deceived me, and I ate" Gen 3:13. That was true enough 1Tim 2:14, but the serpent's guilt did not justify her sin. Again, James 1:14 stands as a reminder that whenever we sin, it is because we are drawn away by our own lust. No matter what means Satan may use to beguile us into sin -- no matter how subtle his cunning--- the responsibility for the deed itself still lies with the sinner and no one else. Eve could not escape accountability for what she had done by transferring the blame. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away. — Robert Frost

Wonderful or supernatural events are not so uncommon, rather they are irregular in their incidence. Thus there may be not one marvel to speak of in a century, and then often enough comes a plentiful crop of them; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea serpents engulf every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms beset humanity. — David Garnett

Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; So ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. — William Shakespeare

He turned his head to look at her, trying to think of ways to plead his case. Some way to dazzle and beguile her and make her glad that it was him she was here with. Something witty and persuasive, but she turned at precisely the same moment he did, with invitation in her eyes, and all he could come up with was, "Damn, I really want to kiss you."

Her hesitation was a mere fraction of a second. "Me too," she whispered.

It was all he needed to hear, and in an instant she was in his arms. He kissed her, hard, with no prelude, no artful negotiations or seductive machinations. Just hungry kisses that sent his mind spinning and his body following. She kissed him back with equal enthusiasm, with one hand on his chest and the other wrapped tightly around the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Her mouth was sweet, as sweet as he'd imagined, with lips so soft he could have fallen over the edge of that lighthouse and thought the sensation was just from her touch. — Tracy Brogan

He doesn't like making others uncomfortable.
-Helen to Sophia about Alistair — Elizabeth Hoyt

And so they lived many happy years, and the promised tasks were accomplished. Yet long afterward, when all had passed away into distant memory, there were many who wondered whether King Taran, Queen Eilonwy, and their companions had indeed walked the earth, or whether they had been no more than dreams in a tale set down to beguile children. And, in time, only the bards knew the truth of it. — Lloyd Alexander

Tis the strumpet's plague
To beguile many, and be beguiled by one. — Anthony Ashley Cooper

Have you never known a cruel wind? What an easy, balmy, tropical life you must have! I never tease, madam! I coax, I beguile, I stomp, I throw tantrums, and for certain, I freeze - I am the Coldest and Harshest of all the Harsh Airs! I am the shiver of the world! But I do not tease. You can cause ever so much more trouble by taking folk seriously, asking just what they're doing and doing just what they ask. — Catherynne M Valente

All I know is that the hours are long ... and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which ... may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit. — Samuel Beckett

Music, Music for a while Shall all your cares beguile. Alexander's Feast — John Dryden

It was a strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope, through eighteen years! — Emily Bronte

Then you my goddess with your immortal lips smiling
Would ask what now afflicts me, why again
I am calling and what now I with my restive heart
Desired:
Whom now shall I beguile
To bring you to her love?
Who now injures you, Sappho?
For if she flees, soon shall she chase
And, rejecting gifts, soon shall she give.
If she does not love you, she shall do so soon
Whatsoever is her will.
Come to me now to end this consuming pain
Bringing what my heart desires to be brought:
Be yourself my ally in this fight. — Sappho

Beauty to beguile, spies to ensnare, and gold, always gold, to tempt, to trap, to control. — Karen Azinger

New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him. — Frank Lloyd Wright

A story is not like a road to follow ... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you. — Alice Munro

Marcus stood at the mantel mirror, fussing with his lace cuffs, adjusting his cravat and openly admiring his reflection. "I'll beguile her with the full power of my persuasive charm."
"And should that fail?"
Marcus turned to his secretary with a slow, devious grin. "Why, Nick, I'd have thought it obvious. I'll just have to ruin her."
-A BREACH OF PROMISE — Victoria Vane

People who might once have bought a newspaper to beguile themselves now look at their Android. Magzines readers look at their Android, too. Amazingly, even manufactures of chewing gum have taken a hit, because nervously chewing while staring out the window has become nervously tapping while staring into a handled screen. — Bruce Sterling

I know if I died tonight, I would die a happy man at peace with myself knowing Gloria's story would finally be told - a mysterious and astonishing story that defies the timeworn precepts of modern psychology and psychiatry - where insanity, genius, the metaphysical, and the mystery of life come together to beguile and confound our contemporary understanding of the mind and its limitless powers to heal.
Dr. Adam Jaxon — Linden Morningstar

Imperceptibly the hours glide on, and beguile us as they pass. — Ovid

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her. — Victor Hugo

Beauty was the ultimate arsenal. Beauty was meant to deceive. It was meant to trick and beguile so their prey never saw death coming. — Pepper Winters

Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?
What masque, what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time if not with some delight? — William Shakespeare

My arrival
Her womb's delight
Her existence
My living light
Her wounds
My scars
Her skies
My stars
Her days
My hours
Her strength
My powers
I breathe my name
Being her child
Without mother
Life's beguiled
From the poem 'Mother — Munia Khan

O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile:
So have all sages said, all poets sung. — Jean Ingelow

When all within is peace How nature seems to smile Delights that never cease The live-long day beguile — William Cowper

In the arena, he continued, it won't be enough just to fight your best. It's never enough to simply win the battle. What you have to win is their hearts. Caesar's heart. Charm them, beguile them, seduce the mob. That will make him fall in love with you. Because unless Caesar loves you, you cannot truly claim Victory. — Lesley Livingston

Not for no cold did freeze,
Nor any cloud beguile
Th'eternal flowering spring — Torquato Tasso

It really so in your souls? Are you now henceforth dead to the world, and dead to sin, and quickened into the life of Christ? If you are so, then the text will bear to you a third and practical meaning, for it will not merely be true that your old man is condemned to die and a new nature is bestowed, but in your common actions you will try to show this by newness of actual conduct. Evils which tempted you at one time will be unable to beguile you now because you are dead to them: the charms of the painted face of the world will no longer attract your attention, for your eyes are blind to such deceitful beauties. You have obtained a new life which can only be satisfied by new delights, which can only be motivated by new purposes and constrained by new principles suitable to its own nature. This — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Language dazzles and deceives because it is masked by faces, because we see it emerging from the lips, because lips please and eyes beguile. But words on paper, black on white, reveal the naked soul. — Guy De Maupassant

Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the soul and brain of man. — Clarence Darrow

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln — Abraham Lincoln

A proper Irishman always does what a lady asks him. Sure an' it's been the ruin av us. We're at the mercy av the petticoats. — L.M. Montgomery

Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile — Homer

Wine give strenght to weary men. and
And wine can of their wits the wise beguile.
Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile. and
Let those who drink not, but austerely dine,
Dry up in law; the muses smell of wine. and
No poem was ever written by a drinker of water. and
Bacchus opens the gate of the heart. and
Might to inspire new hopes and powerful
To drown the bitterness of cares. — Homer

If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain. — Washington Irving

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. — Charlotte Bronte

Some people say it's easy to lie. This may be true for them, but the hard part is remembering the lie because a lie has no memory. — Virginia Vayna

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. — William Shakespeare

Do not let any sweet-talking woman beguile your good sense with the fascination of her shape. It's your barn she's after. — Hesiod

Barlinnie Prison stands on dark and bloody ground. It is a temple of lost souls, and a place of living nightmares. It's been the breaker of many a man's dreams for more than a century. This prison works to a model of penitence with no pretence of rehabilitation. The criminal population that society has forsaken has filled this once, seemingly, bottomless pit to overflowing with their despair and nightmares of pain. More specifically, it is the battleground of an undeclared war that still ravages to this day, between the screws and the cons. The screws, backed by their authority, would use violence, but in return the prisoners would have to resort to their cunning, beguile, and the odd sudden act of violence. — Stephen Richards

There are indeed many wonders, and with regard to the stories people tell one another, it may be that such tales go beyond the true account and, embellished with iridescent lies, beguile them. — Pindar

This man was a rogue, not because circumstances forced him to be a criminal but because he was born that way. He was probably conning his mother out of her milk the moment he could grin. He'd charm the clothes off a virgin in twenty minutes. And if the poor fool took him home, he'd drink her dad under the table, beguile her mother, charm her grandparents, and treat the girl to a night she'd never forget. In the morning, her dad would be sick with alcohol poisoning, the good silver would be missing together with the family car, and in a month, both the former virgin and her mother would be expecting. — Ilona Andrews

Come and take choice of all my library and so beguile thy sorrow. — William Shakespeare

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
worthy of Kubla Khan's Xanadu dome;
Plushy and swanky, with posh hanky panky
that affluent Yankees can really call
home.

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
a push-button palace, fluorescent repose;
Electric devices for facing a crisis
with frozen fruit ices and cinema shows.

Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter
all chromium kitchens and rubber-tiled dorms;
With waterproof portals to echo the chortles
of weatherproof mortals in hydrogen storms.

What a great come-to-glory emporium!
To enjoy a deluxe moratorium,
Where nuclear heat can beguile the elite
in a creme-de-la-creme crematorium. — E.Y. Harburg

God must be a smell, one of those delicious dreamy aromas that float into the soul on the warm hopeful days of spring. What is God must be one of those smells that beguile and inebriate the mind, who like a fine drunken horse of water the heart now rides, galloping wild in every direction like a river flooding right through the topsoil of your youth, cutting and eroding a groove that will be your life, a canyon sunk deep into the virgin plains and unsawn forests of your early days. — Martin Prechtel

TODAY SOUND KNOW HOW ABOUT EVERY AFFAIR AS PER MODERN CENTURY 24/7 TIME RUN NEED OF THE HOUR WITH ENCYCLIC HEED TO GLOBAL TRAFFIC BEGUILE. — Various

What a strange tune is this, that comes out of the music of Spring.
It seems like the tune of yellow leaves.
Spring has stored up its tears in secret for us all this while.
It was afraid we should not understand it, because we were so youthful.
It wanted to beguile us with smiles.
But we shall sleep our hearts tonight in the sadness of the other shore. — Rabindranath Tagore

Sophia looked down her long nose at the girl. "Who are you?"
"I'm Abigail, ma'am," she said, curtsying. "This is my brother, Jamie. I apologize for him."
Sophia arched an eyebrow. "I'll wager you do that quite a lot."
Abigail sighed, sounding world-weary. "Yes, I do."
"Good girl." Sophia almost smiled. "Younger brothers can be a chore sometimes, but one must persevere."
"Yes, ma'am," Abigail said solemnly.
"Come on, Jamie," Alistair said. "Let's go into dinner before they form a Society for Bossy Older Sisters. — Elizabeth Hoyt

To beguile is to deceive or lead astray, as Lucifer beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

I don't know what you may have seen fit to tell her, Venetia, but so far as I understand it you could think of nothing better to do than to beguile her with some farrago about wishing Damerel to strew rose-leaves for you to walk on!"
Damerel, who had resumed his seat, had been staring moodily into the fire, but at these words he looked up quickly. "Rose-leaves?" His eyes went to Venetia's face, wickedly quizzing her. "But my dear girl, at this season?"
"Be quiet, you wretch!" she said, blushing. — Georgette Heyer

Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe