"Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself."

"It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think."

"Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm, Endless extinction of unhappy hates."

"Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day."

"But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok’d souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will."

"It is — last stage of all — When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man."

"This truth — to prove, and make thine own: ‘Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.’"

"And then he thinks he knows The Hills where his life rose, And the Sea where it goes."

"Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore."

"How fair a lot to fill Is left to each man still."

"Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat."

"Their ineffectual feuds and feeble hates, Shadows of hates, but they distress them still."

"English civilization — the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society — that is what interests me."

"Her cabin’d, ample Spirit, It flutter’d and fail’d for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty Hall of Death."

"Hark! ah, the nightingale — The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark! — what pain!"

"How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Again — thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain!"

"Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew. In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too."

"To thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true."

"Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?"

"I am past thirty, and three parts iced over."

"What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also."

"Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be grey."

"And sigh that only one thing has been lent To youth and age in common — discontent."

"This heart, I know, To be long lov’d was never fram’d; For something in its depths doth glow Too strange, too restless, too untam’d."

"We, in some unknown Power's employ, Move on a rigorous line; Can neither, when we will, enjoy, Nor, when we will, resign."

"Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power."

"What shelter to grow ripe is ours? What leisure to grow wise?"

"Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude."

"I too have long'd for trenchant force, And will like a dividing spear; Have praised the keen, unscrupulous course Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear."

"Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel? I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved; I knew they lived and moved Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet The same heart beats in every human breast!"

"But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us, to know Whence our lives come and where they go."

"And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well — but ’tis not true!"

"With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day and wish’t were done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern."

"Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar."

"Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone."

"Only — but this is rare — When a belovèd hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd— A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know."

"The same heart beats in every human breast."

"A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea."

"I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is."

"Had Shakespeare and Milton lived in the atmosphere of modern feeling, had they had the multitude of new thoughts and feelings to deal with a modern has, I think it likely the style of each would have been far less curious and exquisite. For in a man style is the saying in the best way what you have to say. The what you have to say depends on your age. In the 17th century it was a smaller harvest than now, and sooner to be reaped; and therefore to its reaper was left time to stow it more finely and curiously. Still more was this the case in the ancient world. The poet's matter being the hitherto experience of the world, and his own, increases with every century."

"We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides; — But tasks, in hours of insight willed, Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled."

"Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery."

"A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again."

"A man becomes aware of his life's flow... And there arrives a lull in the hot race."

"They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, And how one ought never to think of one's self, And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking— My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! How pleasant it is to have money."

"I drive through the streets, and I care not a d-mn; The people they stare, and they ask who I am; And if I should chance to run over a cad, I can pay for the damage if ever so bad."

"This world is bad enough, may-be; We do not comprehend it; But in one fact can all agree God won't, and we can't mend it."

"Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?"

"But country folks who live beneath The shadow of the steeple; The parson and the parson’s wife, And mostly married people;Youths green and happy in first love, So thankful for illusion; And men caught out in what the world Calls guilt, in first confusion;And almost every one when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like Him."

"Trust me, I’ve read your German sage To far more purpose e’er than you did; You find it in his wisest page, Whom God deludes is well deluded."