Splendid Day Quotes & Sayings

So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death. — William Ernest Henley

This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates, not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles, not that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water ... and at the same time it had warmth, but not as bergamot, cypress, or musk has, or jasmine or daffodils, not as rosewood has or iris ... This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity, although slight and frail as well, and yet solid and sustaining, like a piece of thin, shimmering silk ... and yet again not like silk, but like pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk - and try as he would he couldn't fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable, indescribable, could not be categorized in any way - it really ought not to exist at all. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day. — Patrick Suskind

All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic. Observe! You treat it like magic, wield it like magic, fear it like magic! Why should a body with more small circles of copper or silver or gold than anyone else have an easy life full of treats every day and sleeping in and other people bowing down? The little circles can't get up and fight a battle or make a supper so splendid you get full just by looking at it or build a house of a thousand gables. They can do those things because everyone agrees to give them power. If everyone agreed to stop giving power to pretty metals and started giving it to thumbnails or mushroom caps or roof shingles or first kisses or tears or hours or puffin feathers, those little circles would just lay there tarnishing in the rain and not making anyone bow their noses down to the ground or stick them up in the air. — Catherynne M Valente

God seems to far away.
Does He? Have you noted the splendid display of wildflowers? Have you listened to a child's laughter or watched a sunrise or a sunset? Have you seen peace on a person's face when they should be miserable?
I want that for you. I want you to be able to face very moment of the day knowing God loves you. — DiAnn Mills

But
no
splendid is not the right word. they are splendid, but they are
they are so friendly. Oh dear!' she said, and looked up at him, half laughing, half embarassed. 'How childish that sounds! But so many of the beatiful things in the rooms beneath us
push you away
tell you to stand back
order you to admire and be abashed. These
these draw you in. These make you want to stay and
and have them for company. Yes, that's right. But I
I am still making them sould like a
like
sort of comfortable, though, am I not? Like a bowl of warm bread and milk and an extra pillos, and that's not it at all. They are not comfortable. Indeed, I feel that if I lived with them for long, I should have to learn to be ... better, or greater, myself. If this Queen of the Heavenly Mountain looked down at me from my bedroom wall every day, soon I should have to go looking for the path to her domain. I wouldn't be able to help myself. — Robin McKinley

Thus on Predator Day we meditate on the Alpha Predator aspects of God. The suddenness and ferocity with which an apprehension of the Divine may appear to us; our smallness and fearfulness-may I say, our Mouselikeness-in the face of such Power; our feelings of individual annihilation in the brightness of that splendid Light. God walks in the tender dawn Gardens of the mind, but He also prowls in its night Forests. He is not a tame Being, my Friends: he is a wild Being, and cannot be summoned and controlled like a Dog.-Adam One — Margaret Atwood

So deeply ingrained is the unconscious northern hemisphere chauvinism in those of us who live there, and even some who don't. 'Unconscious' is exactly right. That is where consciousness-raising comes in. It is for a deeper reason than gimmicky fun that, in Australia and New Zealand, you can buy maps of the world with the South Pole on top. What splendid consciousness-raisers those maps would be, pinned to the walls of our northern hemisphere classrooms. Day after day, the children would be reminded that 'north' is an arbitrary polarity which has no monopoly on 'up'. — Richard Dawkins

The sunset was a splendid display. I wondered if it was showing off for my benefit or if it was often that spectacular. Rarely had I seen such a gorgeous scene; the riotous colors flamed out over the sky in shades that I had no words to describe. Birds sang their last songs of the day before tucking in for the night, and still the darkness hung back. Now, I thought, I understand the word "twilight." It was created for just this time - in this land. — Janette Oke

The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things. — G.K. Chesterton

And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. — Oriana Fallaci

He was hungry, and his first thought was to collect a dozen or two gulls' eggs to make a meal. But embryo chicks were forming in all of them. So he rowed out to do some fishing and was more succesful. He lived on fish from day to day and sang and whiled the time away and ruled over the island. When it rained he too shelter beneath a splendid overhangig rock. At night he slept on a patch of grass and the sun never set. — Knut Hamsun

Addressing the Columbia crew after winning the intercollegiate regatta: I congratulate you most heartily upon the splendid victory you have won, and the luster you have shed upon the name of Columbia College. I thank you for the Faculty of the College, for the manifest service you have done to this institution ... I am convinced that in one day or in one summer, you have done more to make Columbia College known than all your predecessors have done since the foundation of the college by this, your great triumph. — Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard

Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The roses, the lovely notes, the dining and dancing are all welcome and splendid. But when the Godiva is gone, the gift of real love is having someone who'll go the distance with you. Someone who, when the wedding day limo breaks down, is willing to share a seat on the bus. — Oprah Winfrey

On that golden summer day, the young woman had just finished her morning run. She had sprinted the last half mile, then stopped abruptly to catch her breath. She was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, eyes on the ground, her mind a world away, perhaps in Barcelona or Tuscany or Rome, exulting in the enchanting sights she would soon see, the splendid life she would have.

It was then that the train hit her.

Unaware, unthinking, oblivious to everything but the beguiling visions in her head, she had ended her run on the railroad tracks that wound through the center of her small Oregon town, one moment in the fullest expectancy of her glorious youth, adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her body, sugarplum visions dancing in her head, the next moment gone, the transition instantaneous, irrevocable, complete.

If I'd had to die young, hers is the death I would have chosen. — Lionel Fisher

The next day, Magellan gave the order to weigh anchor. The ships fired a salvo of cannon that reverberated among the splendid dark green mountains, gray ravines, and azure glaciers of the strait, and the armada set sail once again, heading west, always west. — Laurence Bergreen

The heavy is the root of the light. The unmoved is the source of all movement. Thus the Master travels all day without leaving home. However splendid the views, she stays serenely in herself. Why should the lord of the country flit about like a fool? If you let yourself be blown to and fro, you lose touch with your root. If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are. — Laozi

People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of ... — Karen Blixen

A splendid storehouse of integrity and freedom has been bequeathed to us by our forefathers. In this day of confusion, of peril to liberty, our high duty is to see that this storehouse is not robbed of its contents. — Herbert Hoover

Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness. — Walt Whitman

Our modern microscopes, scanners, and sensors have disabused us of most of the old fanciful notions about the brain's function. But the brain's strangely remote quality - the way it seems both part of us and apart from us - still influences our perceptions in subtle ways. We have a sense that our brain exists in a state of splendid isolation, that its fundamental nature is impervious to the vagaries of our day-to-day lives. While we know that our brain is an exquisitely sensitive monitor of experience, we want to believe that it lies beyond the influence of experience. We want to believe that the impressions our brain records as sensations and stores as memories leave no physical imprint on its own structure. To believe otherwise would, we feel, call into question the integrity of the self. — Nicholas Carr

It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, Well, that is California all over. — Mark Twain

With an admittedly goofy spring in his step, he made his way across the main hall to the breakfast room, pausing only to peek through the sitting room at the large window, which some enterprising footman had pulled open to let in the warm, spring air. What a day, what a day. Birds were chirping, the sky was blue, the grass was green (as always, but it was still an excellent thing), and he had kissed Miss Wynter.
He nearly bounced right off his feet, just thinking about it.
It had been splendid. Marvelous. A kiss to deny all previous kisses. Really, he didn't know what he'd been doing with all those other women, because whatever had happened when his lips had touched theirs, those had not been kisses.
Not like last night. — Julia Quinn

It is such a splendid sunny day and I have to go. — Sophie Scholl

Far, far away, there is a beautiful Country which no human eye has ever seen in waking hours. Under the Sunset it lies, where the distant horizon bounds the day, and where the clouds, splendid with light and colour, give a promise of the glory and beauty which encompass it. Sometimes it is given to us to see it in dreams. — Bram Stoker

Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth? — Henry Louis Gates

It was one of those rare and beautiful days in winter when England remembers that there is a sun. The star of the day, pale but nevertheless still splendid, was setting in the horizon, glorifying at one the heavens and the sea with bands of fire, and casting upon the tower and the old houses of the city a last ray of gold which made the windows sparkle like the reflection of a conflagration. — Alexandre Dumas

Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror. — C.S. Lewis

The old fashioned family physician and general practitioner ... was a splendid figure and useful person in his day; but he was badly trained, he was often ignorant, he made many mistakes, for one cannot by force of character and geniality of person make a diagnosis of appendicitis, or recognize streptococcus infection. — Charles Loomis Dana

Sunset and sunrise are two splendid movies that you can watch for seventy or eight years every day! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Try to spend a few moments each day holding a picture of your body and your mind in a state of splendid health. — Jean Houston

I think the nicest thing about days is their unexpectedness. It's jolly to wake up like this on a golden-fine morning and day-dream for ten minutes before I get up, imagining heaps of splendid things that might happen. — L.M. Montgomery

Sometimes it is easier to hear the cries of poor people who are far away than it is to hear the cries of our brothers and sisters in our own community. There is nothing very splendid in responding to the cry of the person who is with us day after day and who gets on our nerves. Perhaps too we can only respond to the cries of others when we have recognized and accepted the cry of our own pain. — Jean Vanier

One splendid summer afternoon Kaspar realized he had never been happier in his life or both of his lives, past and present. Not fireworks-orgasms-and-champagne happy, but on waking in the morning he was glad almost every single day to be exactly where he was. He had never before experienced the feeling of genuine, constant well-being and it was a true revelation. The longer the satisfaction continued, the less he thought about his previous life as a mechanic and the extraordinary things he'd once seen and been able to do. Misery may love company but happiness is content to be alone. The funny irony of his existence now was, as long as he was this happy and content with his lot, Kaspar didn't need to make much of an effort to "walk away" from his mechanic's life because now he was sated with this one both in mind and heart. — Jonathan Carroll

Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind the strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
through each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
that will cast a revelatory beam
upon the meaning of the human dream.
Courage, love, friendship,
compassion, and empathy
lift us above the simple beasts
and define humanity. — Dean Koontz

Cleopatra: Whoever is born on a day I forget to send a message to Antony will die a beggar. Bring ink and paper, Charmian. Welcome, my good Alexas. Charmian, did I ever love Caesar as much as this?
Charmian:
Oh, that splendid Caesar!
Cleopatra:
May you choke on any other sentiments like that! Say, "That splendid Antony."
Charmian:
The courageous Caesar!
Cleopatra:
By Isis, I'll give you bloody teeth if you ever compare Caesar with Antony, my best man among men. — William Shakespeare

What a splendid day!' said Anne, drawing a long breath. 'Isn't it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren't born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one. — L.M. Montgomery

THey were jeered and admired by both sides and were not shot at, for display and panoply were part of war, which was less war than ceremonial sport, a wild, fierce festival ... A day of war was dangerous and splendid, regardless of its outcome; it was a war of individuals and gallantry, quite innocent of tactics and cold slaughter. A single death
or two or three
was the end purpose of the war ... — Peter Matthiessen

My river of words and her silence seemed to demonstrate that my life was splendid but uneventful, which left me time to write to her every day, while hers was dark but full — Elena Ferrante

The joy of this day is splendid. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Thank the Lord for a mother who was a general as well as a Latter-day Saint; who realized that it was a remarkable and splendid thing to encourage a boy to do something besides perhaps milking cows if he was on a farm, if he had ambitions along athletic lines. — Heber J. Grant

Each day is filled with beautiful splendid. — Lailah Gifty Akita

One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been. — Sophocles

324This morning a splendid dawn passed over our house on its way to Kansas. This morning Kansas rolled out its sleep into a sunlight grandly announced, proclaimed throughout heaven--one more of the very finite number of days that this old prairie has been called Kansas, or Iowa. But it has all been one day, that first day. Light is constant, we just turn over in it. So every day is in fact the selfsame evening and morning. My grandfather's grave turned into the light, and the dew on his weedy little mortality patch was glorious — Marilynne Robinson

We must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day had been. — Sophocles

All that profligate investment of energy to effect a splendid, momentary reversal of natural law. That such a reversal should demand so much and last such a short time was terrible; that people would go for it anyway was both terrible and wonderful.
... A game, or maybe even not that
maybe it was only practice for a game, the way that all the sweat and trembling exhaustion in the Wilshire loft that day had just been practice. Practice for a show that only a few people would probably care to attend and which would probably close quickly. — Stephen King

What shall I say of the gallantry with which these Marines have fought! Of the slopes of Hill 142; of the Mares Farm; of the Bois de Belleau and the Village of Bouresches stained with their blood, and not only taken away from the Germans in the full tide of their advance against the French, but held by my boys against counter attacks day after day and night after night. I cannot write of their splendid gallantry without tears coming to my eyes. — James Harbord

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor. Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead Which, the more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Just as in the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus expresses here the great desire of his Father to offer his children a banquet and his eagerness to get it going even when those who are invited refuse to come. This invitation to a meal is an invitation to intimacy with God. This is especially clear at the Last Supper, shortly before Jesus' death. There he says to his disciples: "From now on, I tell you, I shall never again drink wine until the day I drink the new wine with you in the kingdom of my Father." And at the close of the New Testament, God's ultimate victory is described as a splendid wedding feast: "The reign of the Lord our God Almighty has begun; let us be glad and joyful and give glory to God, because this is the time for the marriage of the Lamb. ... blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb — Henri J.M. Nouwen

We will encounter great obstacles and splendid views, long dry deserts and shadow-rich trees. We will have to fight against those who try to attack and rob us. We will also make wonderful friends. We will often wonder if we will ever make it, but one day we will see coming to us the One who has been waiting for all eternity to welcome us home. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

One last thing I remember which was like a portent of things to come. We had been having tea in Dr Jordan's house in Baghdad. He was a good pianist, and was sitting that day playing us Beethoven. He had a fine head, and I thought, looking at him, what a splendid man he was. He had seemed always gentle and considerate. Then there was a mention by someone, quite casually, of Jews. His face changed; changed in an extraordinary way that I had never noticed on anyone's face before. He said: 'You do not understand. Our Jews are perhaps different from yours. They are a danger. They should be exterminated. Nothing else will really do but that.' I stared at him unbelievingly. He meant it. It was the first time I had come across any hint of what was to come later — Agatha Christie

Now when the primrose makes a splendid show, And lilies face the March-winds in full blow, And humbler growths as moved with one desire Put on, to welcome spring, their best attire, Poor Robin is yet flowerless; but how gay With his red stalks upon this sunny day! — William Wordsworth

This morning a splendid dawn passed over our house on its way to Kansas. This morning Kansas rolled out of its sleep into a sunlight grandly announced, proclaimed throughout heaven - one more of the very finite number of days that this old prairie has been called Kansas, or Iowa. But it has all been one day, that first day. Light is constant, we just turn over in it. So every day is in fact the selfsame evening and morning. — Marilynne Robinson

I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before. — George Mikes

The very violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a moment. It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant and twaddle? — Oscar Wilde

What is it about wearing a tuxedo or that little black dress, that makes us feel confident, beautiful, splendid, even invincible?
We put on formal wear and suddenly we become extraordinary.
On the days when you feel low and invisible, why not try this on for size: imagine you are wearing a fantastic tailored tuxedo or a stunning formal gown.
And then proceed with your day. — Vera Nazarian

Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign. — Frances Mayes