Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Worship
It is the Mass that matters.
Augustine Birrell—What, Then, Did Happen at the Reformation? Pub. in Nineteenth Century, April, 1896. Answered, July, 1896.
Ah, why
Should we, in the world’s riper years, neglect
God’s ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised?
Bryant—A Forest Hymn. L. 16.
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And “Let us worship God!” he says, with solemn air.
Burns—The Cotter’s Saturday Night. St. 12.
Isocrates adviseth Demonicus, when he came to a strange city, to worship by all means the gods of the place.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. III. Sec. IV. Memb. 1. Subsec. 5.
The heart ran o’er
With silent worship of the great of old!—
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
Byron—Manfred. Act III. Sc. 4.
Man always worships something; always he sees the Infinite shadowed forth in something finite; and indeed can and must so see it in any finite thing, once tempt him well to fix his eyes thereon.
Carlyle—Essays. Goethe’s Works.
And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship.
Emerson—An Address. July 15, 1838.
I don’t like your way of conditioning and contracting with the saints. Do this and I’ll do that! Here’s one for t’other. Save me and I’ll give you a taper or go on a pilgrimage.
Erasmus—The Shipwreck.
What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile:
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strown;
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.
Bishop Heber—From Greenland’s Icy Mountains. Missionary Hymn.
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod.
They have left unstained, what there they found—
Freedom to worship God.
Felicia D. Hemans—The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds.
And his gods they are shaped in his image and mirror his needs.
And he clothes them with thunders and beauty,
He clothes them with music and fire,
Seeing not, as he bows by their altars,
That he worships his own desire.
D. R. P. Marquis (Don Marquis)—The God-Maker, Man.
For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true;
And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too;
For no form of a god, and no fashion
Man has made in his desperate passion,
But is worthy some worship of mine;
Not too hot with a gross belief,
Nor yet too cold with pride,
I will bow me down where my brothers bow,
Humble, but open eyed.
D. R. P. Marquis (Don Marquis)—The God-Maker, Man.
Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp’d stocks and stones.
Milton—On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.
How often from the steep
Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,
Sole, or responsive each to other’s note,
Singing their great Creator?
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 680.
Every one’s true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.
Montaigne—Apology for Raimond Sebond. (Quoting Apollo.)
Together kneeling, night and day,
Thou, for my sake, at Allah’s shrine,
And I—at any God’s for thine.
Moore—Lalla Rookh. Fire Worshippers. Fourth Division. L. 309.
So shall they build me altars in their zeal,
Where knaves shall minister, and fools shall kneel:
Where faith may mutter o’er her mystic spell,
Written in blood—and Bigotry may swell
The sail he spreads for Heav’n with blasts from hell!
Moore—Lalla Rookh. Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.
Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. If he worship not the true God, he will have his idols.
Theodore Parker—Critical and Miscellaneous Writings. Essay I. A Lesson for the Day.
Stoop, boys: this gate
Instructs you how to adore the heavens and bows you
To morning’s holy office.
Cymbeline. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 2.
Get a prayer-book in your hand,
And stand betwixt two churchmen.
Richard III. Act III. Sc. 7. L. 47.