Philip James Bailey

Festus (1839)

• Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
  • Proem.

• Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.
  • Proem.

• Let each man think himself an act of God,
  His mind a thought, his life a breath of God;
  And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds,
  To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.
  • Proem.

• Men might be better if we better deemed
  Of them. The worst way to improve the world
  Is to condemn it.
  • Scene iv. A Mountain; Sunrise. Compare: "The surest plan to make a man / Is to think him so", J. R. Lowell, Biglow Papers, II, ii. St. 9.

• We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
  In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
  We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
  Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
  Life's but a means unto an end; that end
  Beginning, mean, and end to all things, —God.
  • Scene v. A Country Town.

• Who never doubted never half believed
  Where doubt there truth is—'t is her shadow.
  • Scene v. A Country Town. Compare: "There lives more faith in honest doubt / Believe me, than in half the creeds", Alfred Tennyson.

• America thou half-brother of the world!
  With something good and bad of every land.
  • Scene x. Earth's Surface.

• Music tells no truths.
  • Scene xi. A Village Feast.

• Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
  And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
  • Scene xvi. The Hesperian Sphere.

• The worst men often give the best advice.

• They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

• I cannot be content with less than heaven.

• Kindness is wisdom.

• Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from hell.

• Respect is what we owe; love what we give.