Quote collection
257 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"XI I sang his name instead of song; Over and over I sang his name: Backward and forward I sang it along, With my sweetest notes, it was still the same! I sang it low, that the slave-girls near Might never guess, from what they could hear, That all the song was a name."
"Who can fear Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll- Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll The silver iterance!-only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence, with thy soul."
"The large white owl that with eye is blind, That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow, Is carried away in a gust of wind."
"A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul."
"Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!"
"In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I."
"You believe In God, for your part?--that He who makes Can make good things from ill things, best from worst, As men plant tulips upon dunghills when They wish them finest."
"It is difficult to get rid of people when you once have given them too much pleasure."
"The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation."
"My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument."
"Foolishness and criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together!"
"Books are men of higher stature."
"The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, Since every victim-carrion turns to use, And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, Against each piled injustice."
"The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)Is by thee only, whom I love alone."
"You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three."
"Utterance is the evidence of foregone study."
"Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove."
"Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones."
"But I love you, sir: And when a woman says she loves a man, The man must hear her, though he love her not."
"I, who had had my heart full for hours, took advantage of an early moment of solitude, to cry in it very bitterly. Suddenly a little hairy head thrust itself from behind my pillow into my face, rubbing its ears and nose against me in a responsive agitation, and drying the tears as they came."