"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."

"Was Christ a man like us? — Ah! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he!"

"The power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty. Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"With women the heart argues, not the mind."

"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."

"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."

"Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we say and feel — below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel, there flows With noiseless current, strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The same heart beats in every human breast."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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!"

"At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is."

"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."

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

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

"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!"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The free-thinking of one age is the common sense of the next."

"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."