So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: This is old age; but then thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change To withered weak and grey.

-Milton,John
  Michael to  Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.11, l.535^40.

O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

-Milton,John
Samson  Agonistes, l.52^7.

  The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe you do.

-Murrow, Edward (Edgar) R(oscoe)
  Harvest of Shame, CBS  T V documentary on migrant labour, 25 Nov, concluding words.

Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifeöthe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

-Norris, Frank Benjamin Franklin
  Of Chicago. The Pit, ch.2.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  Nineteen Eighty-Four, pt.1, ch.1.

God is our refuge and our strength, in straits a present aid; Therefore, although the earth remove, we will not be afraid.

-Scottish Metrical Psalms
  Psalm 46:1^2.

And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry.

-Sidney, Sir Philip
  The Defence of Poetry.

Man's strength is but little, and futile his concerns.

-Simonides of Ceos
Lyrica Graeca Selecta, (ed. D L Page), no.354.

Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

-Swinburne, Algernon Charles
  Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'Before the beginning of years'.

There lies the port; the vessel, puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with meö That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheadsöyou and I are old: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows: for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides: and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and hearth: that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.44^70.

O fall'n at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!

-Tennyson
  'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington', stanza 4, l.38^9.

Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.

-Trollope, Anthony
  CanYou Forgive Her?, ch.24.

King of comforts, King of life, Thou hast cheered me, And when fears and doubts were rife, Thou hast cleared me. Not a hook in all my breast But thou fill'st it, Not a thought in all my rest But thou kill'st it. Wherefore with my utmost strength I will praise thee, And as thou giv'st line, and length, I will raise thee.

-Vaughan, Henry
  Silex Scintillans,'Praise'.

The Soviet Union remains a superpower in the military and nuclear senseöonly its economy is in difficulty. People want me to lead the troops out or to chuck them over the border, but I have neither the strength nor the will to do it.

-Walesa, Lech
  In TheTimes,17 Apr. English poet  and Sinologist.  He was  a distinguished translator of Chinese andJapanese literature.

For thou wert still the poor man's stay, The poor man's heart, the poor man's hand; And all the oppressed, who wanted strength, Had thine at their command.

-Wordsworth,William
  'Rob Roy's Grave', l.109^12 (published1807).