Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Creation
Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
Alphonso X, the Wise.
For we also are his offspring.
Aratus—Phœnomena. Said to be the passage quoted by St. Paul. Acts. XVII. 28.
You own a watch the invention of the mind,
Though for a single motion ’tis designed,
As well as that which is with greater thought
With various springs, for various motions wrought.
Blackmore—The Creation. Bk. III. The creation and the watch. Hallam—Literature of Europe. II. 385, traces its origin to Cicero—De Natura Deorum. Found also in Herbert of Cherbury’s treatise De Religione Gentilium. Hale—Primitive Origination of Mankind. Bolingbroke, in a letter to Pouilly. Paley used the illustration, which he took from Niuwentyt.
Are we a piece of machinery that, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod?
Burns—Letter to Mrs. Dunlop. New Year-Day Morning, 1789.
Creation is great, and cannot be understood.
Carlyle—Essays. Characteristics.
[This saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy’s astronomy, that] “it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice.”
Carlyle—History of Frederick the Great. Bk. II. Ch. VII.
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps,
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the soul of each, and God of all?
Coleridge—The Eolian Harp. (1795).
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony, to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.
Dryden—A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. L. 11.
Two urns by Jove’s high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil, one, and one of good.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. 24. L. 663. Pope’s trans.
Nature they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote.
Lowell—Ode at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865. VI.
Though to recount almighty works
What words of tongue or seraph can suffice,
Or heart of man suffice to comprehend?
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VII. L. 112.
Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great Creator from his work return’d
Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world!
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VII. L. 566.
What cause
Moved the Creator in his holy rest
Through all eternity so late to build
In chaos, and, the work begun, how soon
Absolved.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VII. L. 90.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalms. CXXXIX. 14.
Wie aus Duft und Glanz gemischt
Du mich schufst, dir dank ich’s heut.
As thou hast created me out of mingled air and glitter, I thank thee for it.
Rückert—Die Sterbende Blume. St. 8.
No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended out of heaven from God.
Seeley—Ecce Homo. Ch. XXIV.
When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment;
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows,
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight.
Shakespeare—Sonnets. XV.
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation.
Bernard Shaw—Man and Superman. Act I.
Through knowledge we behold the world’s creation,
How in his cradle first he fostered was;
And judge of Nature’s cunning operation,
How things she formed of a formless mass.
Spenser—Tears of the Muses. Urania. L. 499.
Each moss,
Each shell, each drawling insect, holds a rank
Important in the plan of Him who fram’d
This scale of beings; holds a rank which, lost
Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap
Which Nature’s self would rue.
Benjamin Stillingfleet—Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Natural History. P. 127. (Ed. 1762).
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Conclusion. Last Stanza.
As if some lesser God had made the world,
And had not force to shape it as he would.
Tennyson—The Passing of Arthur. L. 14.
Le monde m’embarrasse, et je ne puis pas songer
Que cette horloge existe et n’a pas d’Horloger.
The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream
That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire.
The chain that’s fixed to the throne of Jove,
On which the fabric of our world depends,
One link dissolved, the whole creation ends.
Edmund Waller—Of the Danger His Majesty Escaped. L. 68.