Mail

Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world.

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• Belshazzar had a letter,—
  He never had but one;
  Belshazzar's correspondence
  Concluded and begun
  In that immortal copy
  The conscience of us all
  Can read without its glasses
  On revelation's wall.
  • Emily Dickinson, Poems (Ed. 1891), XXV, Belshazzar had a Letter.

• Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
  That well-known name awakens all my woes.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 29.

• Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
  Led thro' a sad variety of woe:
  Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,
  Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 35.

• Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
  Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 51.

• The letter is too long by half a mile.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 54.

• Here are a few of the unpleasant'st words
  That over blotted paper!
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act III, scene 2, line 254.

• Tell him there's a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act V, scene 1, line 46.

• What! have I 'scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them?
  • William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act II, scene 1, line 1.

• I have a letter from her
  Of such contents as you will wonder at:
  The mirth whereof so larded with my matter,
  That neither singly can be manifested,
  Without the show of both.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), Act IV, scene 6, line 12.

• Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a postcript.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act II, scene 5, line 187.

• If this letter move him not, his legs cannot. I'll give 't him.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act III, scene 4, line 188.

• Let me hear from thee by letters.
  • William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590s), Act I, scene 1, line 57.

• I read
  Of that glad year that once had been,
  In those fall'n leaves which kept their green,
  The noble letters of the dead:
  And strangely on the silence broke
  The silent-speaking words.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part XCV.

• Thou bringest * * *
  * * letters unto trembling hands.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part X.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 617-18.

• (He) put that which was most material in the postscript.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays, Arber's Ed. 93.

• He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,
  Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief
  Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some.
  • William Cowper, Winter Evening, Book IV, line 12.

• The welcome news is in the letter found;
  The carrier's not commission'd to expound;
  It speaks itself, and what it does contain,
  In all things needful to be known, is plain.
  • John Dryden, Religio Laici, line 366.

• Carrier of news and knowledge,
  Instrument of trade and industry,
  Promoter of mutual acquaintance,
  Of peace and good-will
  Among men and nations.
  • Charles W. Eliot, Inscription on Southeast corner of Post-office, Washington, D. C.

• Messenger of sympathy and love,
  Servant of parted friends,
  Consoler of the lonely,
  Bond of the scattered family,
  Enlarger of the common life.
  • Charles W. Eliot, Inscription on Southwest corner of Post-office, Washington, D. C.

• Every day brings a ship,
  Every ship brings a word;
  Well for those who have no fear,
  Looking seaward well assured
  That the word the vessel brings
  Is the word they wish to hear.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters.

• Sent letters by posts … being hastened and pressed on.
  • Esther, VIII. 10. 14.

• Thy letter sent to prove me,
  Inflicts no sense of wrong;
  No longer wilt thou love me,—
  Thy letter, though, is long.
  • Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, New Spring, No. 34.

• Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
  • Herodotus, Inscription on the front of the Post office, New York City.

• Letters, from absent friends, extinguish fear,
  Unite division, and draw distance near;
  Their magic force each silent wish conveys,
  And wafts embodied thought, a thousand ways:
  Could souls to bodies write, death's pow'r were mean,
  For minds could then meet minds with heav'n between.
  • Aaron Hill, Verses Written on a Window in a Journey to Scotland.

• An exquisite invention this,
  Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,—
  This art of writing billet-doux—
  In buds, and odors, and bright hues!
  In saying all one feels and thinks
  In clever daffodils and pinks;
  In puns of tulips; and in phrases,
  Charming for their truth, of daisies.
  • Leigh Hunt, Love-Letters Made of Flowers.

• A piece of simple goodness—a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature—a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.
  • Douglas Jerrold, Specimens of Jerrold's Wit, The Postman's Budget.

• A strange volume of real life in the daily packet of the postman. Eternal love and instant payment!
  • Douglas Jerrold, ;;Specimens of Jerrold's Wit, The Postman's Budget.

• My days are swifter than a post.
  • Job, IX. 25.

• Kind messages, that pass from land to land;
  Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history,
  In which we feel the pressure of a hand,—
  One touch of fire,—and all the rest is mystery!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Seaside and Fireside, Dedication, Stanza 5.

• Good-bye—my paper's out so nearly,
  I've only room for, Yours sincerely.
  • Thomas Moore, The Fudge Family in Paris, Letter VI.

• Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
  • I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.
  • Blaise Pascal, Lettres provinciales, 16 (Dec. 14, 1656).

• Ev'n so, with all submission, I
  * * * * *
  Send you each year a homely letter,
  Who may return me much a better.
  • Matthew Prior, Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd, line 23.

• And oft the pangs of absence to remove
  By letters, soft interpreters of love.
  • Matthew Prior, Henry and Emma, line 147.

• I will touch
  My mouth unto the leaves, caressingly;
  And so wilt thou. Thus, from these lips of mine
  My message will go kissingly to thine,
  With more than Fancy's load of luxury,
  And prove a true love-letter.
  • John Godfrey Saxe, Sonnet, (With a Letter).

• A woman seldom writes her Mind, but in her Postscript.
  • Richard Steele, Spectator, No. 79.

• Go, little letter, apace, apace,
  Fly;
  Fly to the light in the valley below—
  Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Letter, Stanza 2.