"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."

"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."

"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."

"The Celts certainly have it in a wonderful measure."

"Style...is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it."

"I will not say that thou wast true, Yet let me say that thou wast fair! And they that lovely face who view, They should not ask if truth be there."

"Ere the parting hour go by, Quick, thy tablets, Memory!"

"Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure a name."

"The East bowed low before the blast, In patient deep disdain; She let the legions thunder past, And plunged in thought again."

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

"Hath man no second life? — Pitch this one high!"

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The same heart beats in every human breast."

"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."

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

"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!"

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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?"

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

"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."

"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!"

"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!"

"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."

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

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