Quote collection
353 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?"
"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works."
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone."
"O for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed / That my own soul has to itself decreed."
"I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel."
"How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy."
"I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not."
"The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; and gathering swallows twitter in the skies."
"All clean and comfortable I sit down to write."
"O, sorrow! Why dost borrow Heart's lightness from the merriment of May?"
"I always made an awkward bow."
"If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true."
"You are always new to me."
"The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled."
"Many have original minds who do not think it - they are led away by custom!"
"You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving."
"It ought to come like the leaves to the trees, or it better not come at all."
"When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink."
"Touch has a memory. O say, love say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty?"
"one of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another"