John Stuart Blackie

John Stuart Blackie FRSE (28 July 1809 – 2 March 1895) was a Scottish scholar and man of letters.

Quotes

• Name the leaves on all the trees,
  Name the waves on all the seas,
  Name the notes of all the groves,
  Thus thou namest all my loves.
  I do love the young, the old,
  Maiden modest, virgin bold;
  Tiny beauties and the tall—
  Earth has room enough for all!
  Which is better—who can say?—
  Mary grave or Lucy gay?
  She who half her charms conceals,
  She who flashes while she feels?
  Why should I my love confine?
  Why should fair be mine or thine?
  If I praise a tulip, why
  Should I pass the primrose by?
  Paris was a pedant fool
  Meting beauty by the rule:
  Pallas? Juno? Venus?—he
  Should have chosen all the three!
  • "My Loves", anthologised by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1912)

• Rocking on a lazy billow
  With roaming eyes,
  Cushioned on a dreamy pillow,
  Thou art now wise.
  Wake the power within thee slumbering,
  Trim the plot that's in thy keeping,
  Thou wilt bless the task when reaping
  Sweet labour's prize.
  • Address to the Edinburgh Students. Quoted by Lord Iddlesleigh, Desultory Reading; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 756.

• Order is the law of all intelligible existence.
  • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 440.

• Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
  But God to man doth speak in solitude.
  • Sonnet, Highland Solitude; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 729.