Quote collection
353 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women -- at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure Goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not."
"He ne'er is crowned with immortality Who fears to follow where airy voices lead."
"There is a budding tomorrow in midnight."
"What is there in thee, Moon! That thou should'st move My heart so potently?"
"I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world."
"That queen of secrecy, the violet."
"It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores"
"Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it — make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me —write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair."
"I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving."
"The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable sdvice."
"Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."
"My spirit is too weak--mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky."
"Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making."
"Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive."
"Every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid."
"There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music."
"It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel."
"I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through."
"Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect."
"Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding adieu"