Yore Quotes & Sayings

... yearn for halcyon days of yore". — John Green

Be as proud of your race today as our as our fathers were in days of yore. We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world. — Marcus Garvey

Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze, The best yuh ever poured yuh, But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes, For Hell's broke loose in Georgia. — Stephen Vincent Benet

As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,
Stole from the varying tones, that hung
Vibrant on every iron tongue,
The secret of the sounding wire.
And formed the seven-chorded lyre. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore. — Joyce Grenfell

There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present. — Washington Irving

I am not sure if the ladies understand the full value of the influence of absence, nor do I think it wise to teach it them, lest, like the Clelias and Mandanes of yore, they should resume the humour of sending their lovers to banishment. — Walter Scott

.....I'm certain I asked for a cowboy one December past--
For I wanted the excitement of pioneers to last;
I ached to sing with a fiddle, speak with a drawl and twang;
I surely requested John Wayne to be part of my gang.

Of course I dreamed of a cowboy in those Yuletides of yore--
For I wanted that ace, that corral fighter, that scout roar;
I ached for the authentic frontier hero of the West;
I surely requested the sacred battleground's finest.

I did pray Santa'd give me a cowboy some time ago--
For I wanted a legend in denim wrangler for beau;
I ached to be rounded up safely by my saddled knight;
I surely requested I be prospected, mined, settled right...


-----excerpted from the poem 'A Cowboy For Christmas' in the book FROM GUAM TO CROWN CITY CORONADO (THANKS TO HERMANN, MISSOURI): A JOURNEY IN POESY, by Mariecor Ruediger — Mariecor Ruediger

Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To bring home the point, she compared New Years resolutions of girls at the end of the nineteenth centyry with those at the end of the twentieth. Heres what a young woman of yore wrote:
Resolved: to think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self-restrained in conversations and actions. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.
And the contemporary girl:
I will try to make myself better in any way i possibly can.... I will lose weight, get new lenses, already got new haircut, good makeup, new clothes and accessories. — Peggy Orenstein

Matthias," she murmured in Fjerdan, giving his arm what she hoped was a friendly, siblinglike nudge, "must you glower at everything?"
"I'm not glowering."
"We're Fjerdans in the Ravkan sector. We already stand out. Let's not give everyone another reason to think you're about to lay siege to the market. We need to get this task done without drawing unwanted attention. Think of yourself as a spy."
His frown deepened. "Such work is beneath an honest soldier."
"Then pretend to be an actor." He made a disgusted sound.
"Have you ever even been to the theater?"
"There are plays every season in Djerholm."
"Let me guess, sober affairs that last several hours and tell epic tales of the heroes of yore."
"They're actually very entertaining. But I've never seen an actor who knows how to properly hold his sword. — Leigh Bardugo

As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls across our path; the realities of life seem less crude than of yore, they touch our senses less intimately, and they lose much of their poignancy. — Stefan Zweig

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. — Edgar Allan Poe

Forbear harping on what was of yore, for it is the common lot of mortals to sustain the ups and downs of fortune. — Aesop

My parents kept a small cabin the mountains. It was a simple thing, just four walls, and very dark inside. A heavy felt curtain blotted out whatever light made it through the canopy of huge pines and down into the cabin's only window. There was a queen-size bed in there, an armchair, and a wood-burning stove. It wasn't an old cabin. I think my parents built it in the seventies from a kit. In a few spots the wood beams were branded with the word HOME-RITE. But the spirit of the place me think of simpler times, olden days, yore, or whenever it was that people rarely spoke except to say there was a store coming or the berries were poisonous or whatnot, the bare essentials. It was deadly quiet up there. You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it - I've never been very clear on that distinction. — Ottessa Moshfegh

There is only one thing in criket and that is the STRATE BAT. Keep yore bat strate boy and all will be all right in life as in criket. So headmasters sa, but when my bat is strate i still get bowled is that an omen chizz, Aktually i usually prefer to hav a slosh: i get bowled just the same but it is more satisfactory. — Geoffrey Willans

My hand and pen are not in plight,
As they have been of yore. — Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux Of Harrowden

The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form "efficient market" theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by "rational man" models of human behavior from economics and too little by "foolish man" models from psychology and real-world experience. — Charlie Munger

You have been mine before - How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar, your neck turned so, Some veil did fall, - I knew it all of yore. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Man said, I am tired of kings! Sons of the robber-chiefs of yore, They make me pay for their lust and their war; I am the puppet, they pull the strings; The blood of my heart is the wine they drink. I will govern myself for awhile I think, And see what that brings! — Henry Van Dyke

God knows where every particle of the handful of dust has gone; he has marked in his book the wandering of every one of its atoms. He hath death so open before His view, that He can bring all these together, bone to bone, and clothe them with the very flesh that robed them in the days of yore, and make them live again. — Charles Spurgeon

In days of yore, the poet's pen From wing of bird was plunder'd, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove's own eagle sunder'd. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet's numbers; In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers. — John Adams

Behold yon rough and flinty road
Where youth, now youth no more,
Gropes whining, seeking crumbs of loaves
He cast away of yore. — Emma Ghent Curtis

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor. — Alexander Pope

This was the first time that he thoroughly felt and believed himself to be a knight-errant in reality and not merely in fancy, now that he saw himself treated in the same way as he had read of such knights being treated in days of yore. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The naturalists of yore esteemed the ocean to be a treasury of wonders, and sought therein for monstrosities and organisms contrary to the law of nature, such as they interpreted it. — Edward Forbes

The NeXT purchase is too little too late. The Apple of the past was an innovative company that used software and hardware technology together to redefine the way people experienced computing. That Apple is already dead. Very adroit moves might be able to save the brand name. A company with the letters A-P-P-L-E in its name might survive, but it won't be the Apple of yore. — Nathan Myhrvold

I fought in many guises, Many names, but always me. And I see not in my blindness What the objects were I wrought, But as God rules o'er our bickerings It was through His will I fought. So forever in the future, Shall I battle as of yore, Dying to be born a ... fighter, But to die again, once more. — George S. Patton Jr.

Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public. — Michael Kosser

There's me, Gurth, Dotti, Grenn an' about a hunnerd shrews. If'n we wants to lie 'round for a day or two then you'll find yore prob'ly outvoted!"
Lord Brocktree's eyes told the otter that he was not about to have his decision overruled. Swinging forth his battle blade, he stuck it quivering into the ground. "Lets's be reasonable about this, friend. Let me explain the rules. One Badger Lord carries two hundred votes and his sword carries another hundred. Agreed?"
Ruff looked from the sword to the badger. Sunlight gleamed from the blade lighting Brocktree's eyes with a formidable gleam. He smiled nervously at his huge friend. "Reason, that's wot I likes, mate. Vote carried. We go after brekkist tomarrer! — Brian Jacques

Every one wants to command, and no one wants to obey; and this is owing to the absence of that wonderful brahmacharya system of yore. First, learn to obey. The command will come by itself. Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master. — Swami Vivekananda

If y'can't see with yore own two eyes what's in front of them, then y'better off closin' 'em an' goin' t'sleep, 'tis far more restful!
- Gerul — Brian Jacques

Days of yore when America was no more than a strip of land stretching a couple hundred miles west of the Atlantic and the rest was just a very compelling idea. — Charles Frazier

Where there are wars, there will be crows, the carrion-fanciers. And ravens too, the warbirds, the eyeball gourmands. And vultures, the holy birds of yore, old connoisseurs of rot. — Margaret Atwood

And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore. — Donna Tartt

The world is moving from the scientistic guilds and sects of yore toward the new sciences of information. Fragmented and futilitarian, the academic sciences are turning to politics, panics, and cartels to preserve their old privileges. Decades ago I pored through the Harvard catalogue and concluded that 80 percent of the courses stultified their students. Now those stultified students are running the country. Most of the courses they took were either self-evident or wrong, ideological or tautological, twisted or trivial. — George Gilder

When talking of political addresses in Bihar, two of them stand out. One is that of Sadaqat Ashram, the famous Congress address of yore, and the other that of Patna house of the three-time Congress chief minister, Dr Jagannath Mishra, perhaps the last vestige of the grand, old party in Bihar. — Santosh Singh

How else account this usage, that enemies of yore may, by the passage of years alone, become friends? — Steven Pressfield

The King beneath the mountains,
The King of carven stone,
The lord of silver fountains
Shall come into his own!
His crown shall be upholden,
His harp shall be restrung,
His halls shall echo golden
To songs of yore re-sung.
The woods shall wave on mountains.
And grass beneath the sun;
His wealth shall flow in fountains
And the rivers golden run.
The streams shall run in gladness,
The lakes shall shine and burn,
And sorrow fail and sadness
At the Mountain-king's return! — J.R.R. Tolkien

I once stirred thunder in the skies, And now, unlike the days of yore - Just tears in a drunken poet's eyes And laughter - from some whore. — Alexander Blok

Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the city; the stronghold of true John Bullism. It is a fragment of London as it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions. Here flourish in great preservation many of the holiday games and customs of yore. The inhabitants most religiously eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, hot-cross-buns on Good Friday, and roast goose at Michaelmas; they send love-letters on Valentine's Day, burn the pope on the fifth of November, and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at Christmas. Roast — Washington Irving

A new political-entertainment class has moved into the noisy void once occupied by the sage pontiffs of yore, a class just as polarized as our partisan divide: one side holding up a fun-house mirror to folly, the other side reveling in its own warped reflection. — James Wolcott

And often, glad no more, We wear a face of joy because We have been glad of yore. — William Wordsworth

A Rose in Winter
A crimson bloom in winter's snow,
Born out of time, like a maiden's woe,
Spawned in a season when the chill winds blow.
'Twas found in a sheltered spot,
Bright sterling gules and blemished not,
Red as a drop o' blood from the broken heart,
Of the maid who waits and weeps atop the tor,
Left behind by yon argent knight sworn to war,
'Til ajousting and aquesting he goes no more.
Fear not, Sweet Jo, amoulderin' on the moor.
The winter's rose doth promise in the fading runes of yore,
That true love once found will again be restored. — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in
obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god. — Washington Irving

Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times. — Marisha Pessl

Hacked to pieces by a band of hillbilly satanists" hadn't ever made my list of imagined ways of getting rubbed out - and as the Samurai warriors of yore meditated on a thousand demises, I too had imagined a whole lot of ways of kicking. Helios Augustus's candle flame flickered in the black opening. He — Laird Barron

Not as ours the books of old - Things that steam can stamp and fold; Not as ours the books of yore - Rows of type, and nothing more. — Henry Austin Dobson

We've dug our holes and hallowed caves Put goblin foes in shallow graves This day our work is just begun In the mines where silver rivers run
Beneath the stone the metal gleams Torches shine on silver streams Beyond the eyes of he spying sun In the mines where silver rivers run
The hammers chime on Mithral pure As dwarven mines in days of yore A craftsman's work is never done In the mines where silver rivers run
To dwarven gods we sing or praise Put another orc in a shallow grave We know our work has just began In the mines where silver rivers run — R.A. Salvatore

Go find someone who will care for ye good, to sit quiet by yore side at the fire, an' if he treats ye decent as you hoped he would, you'll have all that your heart can desire. — Brian Jacques

Urban farming is not only possible, it is crucial. But it can't be like the farming techniques of yore. — Homaro Cantu

Let us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore.
And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store;
The absent friends remembered be, in all that's sung or said,
And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead. — Albert Pike

Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again ... Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes ... — Marguerite Yourcenar

We need to return to the cosmopolitanism of Alexandria of yore, and marry that with the tolerance and democracy of Europe today — Ismail Serageldin

Freedom, to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently treated, and driven to their mines and workshops by the lash of famine. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Learning that flowered in days of yore In these our times is thought a bore. Once knowledge was a well to drink of; Now having fun is all men think of. — John Guy

She still loved the profession and enjoyed the lives and piece to cameras, but she knew it was all a tad too farcical at times. There were far too many stories they reported and forgot. Far too many conflicts that were once headlines and had captured the imaginations of many now awaited resolution, stale and unwanted as yesterday's tea. It was hard to keep up your spirit when you started realizing it was just a job after all and that a headline did not change someone's destiny. Except maybe the reporter's if she or he was picked up by a rival channel for better pay. So getting into the profession wanting to make a difference and working for the greater good as the journalists of yore had done was certainly not an option anymore. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

To Helen Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land! — Edgar Allan Poe

Remember, there were dragons long before men came into the world. Why, it was none other than The Great Dragons of Yore who invented the idea of knighthood. Yes, yes, that's right! Dragons had knights, Kings, princesses and queens long before men crawled out of the muck. — Sully Tarnish

The term "FTM-Butch Border War" just sounds like an alien land of yore. How is it that the gravitational pull of my beard and low-voice should hold [my lesbian friend's] masculinity in deferential orbit? That when standing side-by-side we are supposedly read in comparison, rendering her unalterably more feminine - shorthand, in patriarchal societies, for "lesser than"?

Masculinity has more than enough space to spare. But sometimes its flesh-and-blood vessels act as if we have to wound each other for it, like dogs fighting over too few scraps. Anyway, [she] and I know without speaking that in reality, right here and right now in our present moment, that she and I are two different sides of the same coin; two keys sung for the same tune."

- from "Snapshots: "Sharing Space with Women," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014 — Mitch Kellaway

Sudden Light
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall, - I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more? — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth. — William Wordsworth

The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside. — Hector Hugh Munro