655 quotes
Time past on as lightly as he always steps over flowers, Brussels carpets, marble terraces, green turfs, or whatever simile may best express a path without an impediment.
Deception is always an evil, but in youth — youth, whose very faults should be open-hearted and impetuous, it lays the foundation of the worst possible faults of character.
Ah! love and song are but a dream,
A flower's faint shade on life's dark stream.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Where do purple bubbles swim,
But upon the goblet's brim ?
Drink not deep, howe'er it glow
Sparkles never lie below.
The Golden Violet (1827)
My heart is with thee, Iove ! though now
Thou'rt far away from me :
I envy even my own thoughts,
For they may fly to thee.
God ! that this Earth should be so beautiful,
And yet so wretched !
Difficulty is as needful to appreciation as labour is to existence.
I LOVED her! ay, I would have given
A death-bed certainty of heaven
If I had thought it could confer
The least of happiness on her!
The Troubadour (1825)
Alas! we make
A ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,
But sleep ourselves at the foot: our high resolves
Look down upon our slumbering acts.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
And all o'er heaven is that clear blue
The stars so love to wander through.
They're rising from the silent deep,
Like bright eyes opening after sleep.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Her rival—hers—language has not a word
By woman's ear so utterly abhorr'd.
No marvel, for it robs her only part
Of sweet dominion—empire o'er the heart.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
We seek—we find—
And find the charm has with the search declined.
Affections—pleasures—all in which we trust, —
What do they end in ?—Nothing, or disgust.
The imagination, which is the source of poetry, has in every country been the beginning as well as the ornament of civilization. It civilizes because it refines.
Then they were silent:—words are little aid
To Love, whose deepest vows are ever made
By the heart's beat alone. Oh, silence is
Love's own peculiar eloquence of bliss!
The Improvisatrice (1824)
Children are too often unkind to one another, and deny the allowance they so much need in their own case.
We read of the gales that bear from the shores of Ceylon the breathings of the cinnamon groves.
I have such eagerness of hope
To benefit my kind;
And feel as if immortal power
Were given to my mind.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
I had lost of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it supportable.
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)
How much we give to other hearts our tone,
And judge of others' feelings by our own!
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
How many are there who live eleven months on the hope of the twelfth given to some brief but delightful wandering.