655 quotes
Ah, tell me not that memory
Sheds gladness o'er the past ;
What is recalled by faded flowers,
Save that they did not last?
Were it not better to forget,
Than but remember and regret?
Ethel Churchill (1837)
Where are the flowers, the beautiful flowers,
That haunted your homes and your hearts in the spring ?
Where is the sunshine of earlier hours ?
Where is the music the birds used to bring ?
What we may do
To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate.
We may have said but yesterday some word
Which may not be recalled.
We say that people and that things are changed;
Alas ! it is ourselves that change : the heart
Makes all around the mirror of itself.
There is a city, that for slaves
Has kings, and nations, winds, and waves:
St. Mark is conscious of her power,
His winged lion marks her tower.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Death has most awful lessons ! It is sad,
Aye, strange, to see even the aged die ;
But about youth there is a confidence
In life, that makes it terrible.
It is curious to observe how little one period resembles another. Centuries are the children of one mighty family, but here is no family-likeness between them.
It is an unpleasant thing to differ in opinion with the rest of one's species — it is making a sort of North Pole of one's own, and then setting out in search of it.
Now I hold that necessity merits more amiable adjectives;--what a great deal of trouble is saved thereby. To an undecided person like myself, the inevitable is invaluable.
Oh, she had yet the task to learn
How often woman's heart must turn
To feed upon its own excess
Of deep yet passionate tenderness!
How much of grief the heart must prove
That yields a sanctuary to love!
The Troubadour (1825)
If this city system of colonisation goes on, our children will advertise a green tree, like an elephant, as 'this most wonderful production of nature;' and the meaning of green grass will only be to be found in the dictionary.
Romance and Reality (1831)
Words alike make the destiny of empires and of individuals. Ambition, love, hate, interest, vanity, have words for their engines, and need none more powerful. Language is a fifth element — the one by which all the others are swayed.
Francesca Carrara (1834)
And this is woman's fate:
All her affections are called into life
By winning flatteries, and then thrown back
Upon themselves to perish; and her heart,
Her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness,
Is left to bleed or break!
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Charity is a calm, severe duty; it must be intellectual, to be advantageous. It is a strange mistake that it should ever be considered a merit; its fulfilment is only what we owe to each other, and is a debt never paid to its full extent.
The human heart is like Pandora's box — only it is hatred, not hope, that lies curled up at the bottom. It is well we are little in the habit of analysing our common and passing sensations, — we should be horror-struck at our own quantity of hate.
Romance and Reality (1831)
Ignorance, far more than idleness, is the mother of all the vices; and how recent has been the admission, that knowledge should be the portion of all? The destinies of the future lie in judicious education; an education that must be universal, to be beneficial.
Oh, love is timid in its birth!
Watching her lightest look or stir,
As he but look'd and breathed with her.
Gay words were passing, but he leant
In silence; yet, one quick glance sent,—
His secret is no more his own,
When has woman her power not known?
The Troubadour (1825)
He was an enthusiast—enthusiasm is needed for action; calculation never acts—it is a passive principle.
Oh! world of sweet phantoms, how precious thou art!
The past is perpetual youth to the heart.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
Cecil Forrester was heir to many misfortunes, being handsome, rich, high-born, and clever.
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)