Blessings

I have lawns, I have bowers,
I have fruits, I have flowers.
The lark is my morning charmer;
So you jolly dogs now,
Here's God bless the plow--
Long life and content to the farmer."
-Rhyme on an old pitcher of English pottery

 

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares.--
The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays.
-Henry Wordsworth, Personal Talk

 

Blessed are those who can give without remembering,
And take without forgetting.
-Elizabeth Bibesco

 

What blessings thy free bounty gives,
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives;
T' enjoy is to obey.
-Alexander Pope, The Universal Prayer

 

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!
-John Greenleaf Whittier, The Pumpkin

 

Calvin Coolidge’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
We have been a most favored people. We ought to be a most grateful people. We have been a most blessed people. We ought to be a most thankful people.
-Calvin Coolidge, 30th U.S. President

 

May your belly never grumble
May your heart never ache.
May your horse never stumble,
May your cinch never break.
-Traditional

 

Honor, riches, marriage blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing,
Hope, and comfort from above;
Let us each, thy peace possessing,
Triumph in redeeming love.
-Robert Hawker, Benediction

 

"Bless, oh Lord,
the courage of this Prince
and prosper the works
in his hands and
may his land be
filled with apples.”
-Ancient Saxon Coronation Benediction

 

"Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.”
-Leo Aikman

 

"Bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you,
and pray for them that hurt you.”
-John Hilton, (1599-1657)

 

"May fortune meet you every way and fill your life with blessings.”
-Unknown

 

"I pray to heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but the honest and wise rule under this roof.”
-President John Adams, White House Blessing

 

"Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire;
Blest that abode, where want and pain repair,
And every stranger finds a ready chair;
Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,
Where all the ruddy family around
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail,
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale;
Or press the bashful stranger to his food,
And learn the luxury of doing good.”
-Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveler

 

Monday's Child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child has to work for its living,
But a child that's born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.
-Traditional

 

"God bless the man who first invented sleep!”
So Sancho Panza said, and so say I:
And bless him, also, that he didn't keep
His great discovery to himself; nor try
To make it—as the lucky fellow might—
A close monopoly by patent-right!
-John Godfrey Saxe, Early Rising

 

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,
In the midnight black, or the mid-day blue:
The robin pipes when the sun is here,
And the cricket chirrups the whole night through.
The buds may blow, and the fruit may grow,
And the autumn leaves drop crisp and sear;
But whether the sun, or the rain, or the snow,
There is ever a song somewhere, my dear.
—“A Song,” by J.W. Riley

 

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.
-Traditional Irish Blessing

 

May the blessing of light be on you - light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire, so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it. And may light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the window of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm. And may the blessing of the rain be on you, may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean, and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, and sometimes a star. And may the blessing of the earth be on you, soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day; and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it. May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God. And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly. Amen.
-Traditional Scottish Blessing

 

If there is righteousness in the heart,
there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character,
there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home,
there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
there will be peace in the world.
So let it be.
-Traditional Scottish Blessing

 

"Freedom from mobs as well as kings.
— An American Revolution Era Toast

 

To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
- Edgar A. Poe, To Helen

 

"May you live all of the days of your life.”
- Jonathan Swift

 

Eat thy bread with joy,
and drink thy wine with a merry heart.
— Ecclesiastes 9:10

 

"Another glass, Watson!” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, as he extended the bottle of Imperial Tokay.
“It is a good wine, Holmes.”
“A remarkable wine, Watson.”
— Sir Conan Doyle

 

"Fifty more Christmases at least in this life,
and eternal summers in another.”
- Charles Dickens, Mr. Pickwick's Christmas dinner toast

 

"May their days be long, and full of happiness.
May their children be many, and full of health.
And may they live in peace, and freedom.”
- The Quiet Man

 

"To those gone but not forgotten. And to those forgotten but not gone.”
— Shoe Comic 10/27/00