Quote collection
591 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!"
"Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair."
"O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed."
"Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side."
"Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say. Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away."
"My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known."
"One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a mans eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious,of many things we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away."
"Who mocks at music mocks at love."
"Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone."
"Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out."
"What's memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?"
"I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man."
"Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only."
"I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch."
"It's certain there is no fine thing Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring."
"The house ghost is usually a harmless and well-meaning creature. It is put up with as long as possible. It brings good luck to those who live with it."
"Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare."
"For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose."
"You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends."
"I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me"