All Quotes

"One can put up with, indeed more than put up with, a certain amount of technical carelessness in Poetry, provided it be in other respects of a very high order, as not unoften, for instance, in Shakespeare and Byron. But similar blemishes in a picture would be all but fatal to it in the estimation of connoisseurs, since it would be the first thing that struck them in it."

"English maidens are, in certain respects, to Italian maidens as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine."

"[W]henever one wants to cite something wise and true, one has to go either to the ancients or to the eighteenth century for it."

"Where in the lily lurks the mind, Where in the rose discern the soul?More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake; The mountains yet more heartless seem. […]It is their silence that appals, Their aspect motionless that awes, When searching spirit vainly calls On the effect to bare the Cause."

"If Man makes Conscience, then being good Is only being worldly wise, And universal brotherhood A comfortable compromise."

"Doth logic in the lily hide, And where's the reason in the rose?"

"People living and dead, things past and present, all are contributories to that diminutive stream, oneself; a reflection which is essentially consoling, since it associates one with the sum of things and prevents one from living in barren isolation."

"Repress your antipathies, cultivate your sympathies."

"[C]harm appertains to the essence of the person or thing endowed with it. It cannot be acquired, it cannot be got rid of, and its results are produced without effort, since the person who has it cannot help producing them."

"Women are more frequently charming than men, because they are less self-conscious."

"[I]n all periods of transitional thought and belief the conscience suffers, since its old sanctions have been removed and none other have yet taken their place. It is undermined without being adequately propped up."

"[N]o verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess."

"Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal."

"The most generous of critics, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound."

"O'er the wires the electric message came, "He is no better; he is much the same.""

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul."

"Winter is gone, and spring is over. The cuckoo-flowers grow mauver and mauver"

"A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast. And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While like the eagle free Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee."

"Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise As praises from the men, whom all men praise."

"Who lets slip Fortune, her shall never find, Occasion once passed by, is bald behind."

"Love in her sunny eyes does basking play; Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair; Love does on both her lips for ever stray; And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there. In all her outward parts Love's always seen; But, oh, he never went within."

"The world's a scene of changes, and to be Constant, in Nature were inconstancy."

"Lukewarmness I account a sin As great in love as in religion."

"Well then; I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree; The very honey of all earthly joy Does of all meats the soonest cloy, And they (methinks) deserve my pity, Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings Of this great hive, the city."

"Ah, yet, ere I descend to th' grave May I a small house, and large garden have! And a few friends, and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too! And since Love ne'er will from mee flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as guardian angels are, Only belov'd, and loving me!"

"Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own."

"Well, I've had a happy life."

"General principles are not the less true or important because, from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it, or like that secret influence which binds the world together and holds the planets in their orbits."

"The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature."

"They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness."

"There is a natural tendency in sects to narrow the mind. The extreme stress laid upon differences of minor importance, to the neglect of more general truths and broader views of things, gives an inverted bias to the understanding; and this bias is continually increased by the eagerness of controversy, and captious hostility to the prevailing system. A party-feeling of this kind once formed will insensibly communicate itself to other topics; and will be too apt to lead its votaries to a contempt for the opinions of others, a jealousy of every difference of sentiment, and a disposition to arrogate all sound principle as well as understanding to themselves, and those who think with them. We can readily conceive how such persons, from fixing too high a value on the practical pledge which they have given of the independence and sincerity of their opinions, come at last to entertain a suspicion of every one else as acting under the shackles of prejudice or the mask of hypocrisy. All those who have not given in their unqualified protest against received doctrines and established authority, are supposed to labour under an acknowledged incapacity to form a rational determination on any subject whatever. Any argument, not having the presumption of singularity in its favour, is immediately set aside as nugatory. There is, however, no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice. For this last implies not only the practical conviction that it is right, but the theoretical assumption that it cannot be wrong. From considering all objections as in this manner "null and void,” the mind becomes so thoroughly satisfied with its own conclusions, as to render any farther examination of them superfluous, and confounds its exclusive pretensions to reason with the absolute possession of it."

"Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul."

"Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity."

"Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else."

"The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality in other instances."

"The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing."

"The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men."

"He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever."

"The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time."

"I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man : I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended. I have no mind to have my person made a property of, nor my understanding made a dupe of. I deny that liberty and slavery are convertible terms, that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plenty and famine, the comforts or wretchedness of a people, are matters of perfect indifference. That is all I know of the matter; but on these points I am likely to remain incorrigible, in spite of any arguments that I have seen used to the contrary. It needs no sagacity to discover that two and two make four; but to persist in maintaining this obvious position, if all the fashion, authority, hypocrisy, and venality of mankind were arrayed against it, would require a considerable effort of personal courage, and would soon leave a man in a very formidable minority."

"The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side — the side of corruption and prerogative."

"Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress."

"It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter."

"We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion."

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

"Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety."

"Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food."

"Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke."

"Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference."