Quote collection
353 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish."
"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"
"The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness."
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
"I love your hills and I love your dales, And I love your flocks a-bleating; but oh, on the heather to lie together, With both our hearts a-beating!"
"Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes."
"The poetry of earth is never dead When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide I cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead."
"Feeling well that breathed words Would all be lost, unheard, and vain as swords Against the enchased crocodile, or leaps Of grasshoppers against the sun."
"Four seasons fill the measure of the year; there are four seasons in the minds of men."
"I want a brighter word than bright"
"Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it"
"The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it."
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."
"I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen."
"The air is all softness."
"I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else."
"Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches; little space they stop; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak: Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings Pausing upon their yellow flutterings."
"We have woven a web, you and I, attached to this world but a separate world of our own invention."
"As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden,- "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden;" or, as I might rather express it, Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity."
"Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite."