Precious

Famous quotes containing the word precious:

    License my roving hands, and let them go
    Before, behind, between, above, below.
    O my America! my new-found-land,
    My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
    My mine of precious stones, my empery,
    How blest am I in this discovering thee!
    To enter in these bonds is to be free;
    Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
    John Donne (1572–1631)

    The house-dog lost,
    the little hen escaped,
    the precious hay-rick scattered,
    Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

    Words convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow; and laden with this, their precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered shipwreck and the languages of common life have sunk into oblivion.
    —Anonymous. Quoted in Richard Chevenix Trench, On the Study of Words, lecture 1 (1858)