85 quotes
The irrevocable Hand
That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut
The portals of our earthly destinies;
We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors
Close after us, for ever.
Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)
We never know through what divine mysteries of compensation the Great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; and those three words, "God is love," ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.
A lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and women do suffer therefrom, in all its infinite varieties: loss by death, by faithlessness or unworthiness, and by mistaken or unrequited affection.
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
[T]here are no judgments so harsh as those of the erring, the inexperienced, and the young.
[T]he only real parting is when there is no love left to part from.
It is often easiest to lose those we are fond of and who are fond of us, because in one sense we never can really lose them. Nothing in this world, nor, I believe, in any other, can part those who truly and faithfully love.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
For truly, the greatest of all external blessings is it to be able to lean your heart against another heart, faithful, tender, true, and tried, and record with a thankfulness that years deepen instead of diminishing, "I have got a friend!"
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
There can be — there ought to be — no medium course; a love-affair is either sober earnest or contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous; in the second, simply silly.
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
Silence sweeter is than speech.
The present only is a man's possession; the past is gone out of his hand, wholly, irrevocably. He may suffer from it, learn from it — in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.
Society, in the aggregate, is no fool. It is astonishing what an amount of "eccentricity" it will stand from anybody who takes the bull by the horns, too fearless or too indifferent to think of consequences.
A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)
Sweet April-time — O cruel April-time!
Year after year returning, with a brow
Of promise, and red lips with longing paled,
And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys
Of vanished springs, like flowers.
Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)
I think either parent would have looked amazed had any one pitied them for having a blind child. The loss—a loss only to them, and not to her, the darling!—became familiar, and ceased to wound; the blessedness was ever new.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
Forgotten? No, we never do forget:
We let the years go: wash them clean with tears,
Leave them to bleach, out in the open day,
Or lock them careful by, like dead friends' clothes,
Till we shall dare unfold them without pain—
But we forget not, never can forget.
Poems (1859)
And when I lie in the green kirkyard,
With the mould upon my breast,
Say not that 'She did well — or ill,'
Only, 'She did her best!'
O how grandly cometh Even,
Sitting on the mountain summit,
Purple-vestured, grave, and silent,
Watching o'er the dewy valleys,
Like a good king near his end.
To-morrow is — ah, whose?
Poems (1859)
"Get out o' Mr. Fletcher's road, ye idle, lounging, little —"
"Vagabond," I think the woman (Sally Walkins, once my nurse,) was going to say, but she changed her mind.
John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
God rest ye, little children; let nothing you afright,
For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night;
Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay,
When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas day.
Thirty Years, Being Poems New and Old (1880)
Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty!
Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
Love given willingly, full and free,
Love for love's sake — as mine to thee.
Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
But Love, the master, goes in and out
Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
Just as he please — just as he please.
Poems (1859)