1. “A man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world.”
2. “And O and O,
The daisies blow,
And the primroses are waken'd;
And the violets white
Sit in silver plight,
And the green bud's as long as the spike end.”
3. “And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.”
4. “ASLEEP! O sleep a little while, white pearl!
And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,
And let me call Heaven’s blessing on thine eyes,
And let me breathe into the happy air,
That doth enfold and touch thee all about,
Vows of my slavery, my giving up,
My sudden adoration, my great love!”
5. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.”
6. “Away with old Romance!
Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts;
Away with love-verses, sugar'd in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of idlers;
Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music slide;
The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipation of the few.”
7. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
8. “Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest green,
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers--
Forget-me-not,--the blue bell,--and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!”
9. “Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.”
10. “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
11. “Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.”
12. “Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know.”
13. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on,—
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.”
14. “He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.”
15. “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.”
16. “I cannot exist without you- I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again- my Life seems to stop there- I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I were dissolving Keats, John.…. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion- I have shudder'd at it- I shudder no more- I could be martyr'd for my Religion- Love is my religion- I could die for that- I could die for you. My creed is Love and you are its only tenet- You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist.”
17. "I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your
Loveliness and the hour of my death.
O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute
18. “I long to believe in immortality. . . . If I am destined to be happy with you here - how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality - I wish to live with you forever.”
19. ”I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.”
20. “In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.”
21. “I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my mouth.”
22. “Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.”
23. “Love is my religion - I could die for it.”
24. “Many have original minds who do not think it -- they are led away by custom.”
25. “My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.”
26. “No, no, I'm sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.”
27. “O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.”
28. ”Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.”
29. ”Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.”
30. “Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity—it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”
31. “Should ever the fine-eyed maid to me be kind;
Ah! surely it must be whenever I find;
Some flowery spot, sequestered, wild, romantic;
That often must have seen a poet frantic.”
32. "The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth."
33. “The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.”
34. “The only means of strengthening one's intelligence is to make up one's mind about nothing-- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
35. “There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.”
36. “There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music.”
37. “There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.”
38. “The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.”
39. “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - do I wake or sleep?”
40. “WHAT is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing
In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?
More serene than Cordelia’s countenance?
More full of visions than a high romance?
What, but thee Sleep? Soft closer of our eyes!
Low murmurer of tender lullabies!
Light hoverer around our happy pillows!
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!
Silent entangler of a beauty’s tresses!
Most happy listener! when the morning blesses
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes
That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.”
41. “What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.”
42. ”When I have fears that I may cease to be,
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.”
43. “Where soil is, men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers.”
44. “Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill
Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines
Savory latter-mint, and columbines.”
