All Quotes

"Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regained Eurydice. These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee, I mean to live."

"Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly without father bred!"

"The gay motes that people the sunbeams."

"And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes."

"Forget thyself to marble."

"And join with thee, calm Peace and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet."

"And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure."

"Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!"

"I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heav'n's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

"Oft, on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging low with sullen roar."

"Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth."

"Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, Or the tale of Troy divine."

"But, O sad Virgin, that thy power Might raise Musaeus from his bower, Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as warbled to the string, Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And made Hell grant what Love did seek."

"Or call up him that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold."

"Where more is meant than meets the ear."

"When the gust hath blown his fill, Ending on the rustling leaves With minute drops from off the eaves."

"Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered sleep."

"And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced choir below, In service high, and anthems clear As may, with sweetness, through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes."

"Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain."

"He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself is his own dungeon."

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year."

"He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme."

"Without the meed of some melodious tear."

"Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield; and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night."

"But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!"

"The gadding vine."

"Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears, And slits the thin-spun life."

"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil."

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine."

"Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain)."

"Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook."

"The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."

"Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears."

"Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world."

"Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth."

"For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed; And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walked the waves."

"Every noble work is at first impossible."

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous."

"Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real."

"O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim."

"Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, wherof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History."

"Love not Pleasure; love God."

""Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer."

"As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden— "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden"; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity."

"For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like?"

"The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one."

"That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy."

"Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?"

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through."

"Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done."