655 quotes
Oh, blessedness !
To see the fair creations of the thought
Assume a visible form ; sweet Poesy !
How witching is thy power upon the heart ;
Enchantment that does bind our senses up
In one unutterable influence ;
A charmed spell set over every thought,
Till life's whole hope is cast upon the lyre.
Oh Genius! fling aside thy starry crown,
Close up thy rainbow wings, and on thy head
Lay dust and ashes — for, this cold drear world
Is but thy prison-house. Alas for him
Who has thy dangerous gifts, for they are like
The fatal ones that evil spirits give, —
Bright and bewildering, leading unto death.
Give the children of the poor that portion of education which will enable them to know their own resources ; which will cultivate in them an onward-looking hope, and give them rational amusement in their leisure hours : this, and this only, will work out that moral revolution, which is the legislator's noblest purpose.
'Tis soothing, oh ! most soothing to the heart,
To rove 'mid scenes where once we have been blest!
Each tree, each blossom, has a thrilling charm;
They seem memorials of those happier hours :
The very sigh that tells they are no more,
Is sweet unto the spirit; former days,
And former feelings, rise upon the soul,
Dear as they once have been.
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)
Sympathy is the softener of death, and memory of the loved and the lost is the earthly shadow of their immortality. But who turns aside amid those crowds that hurry through the thronged and noisy streets?—No one can love London better than I do; but never do I wish to be buried there. It is the best place in the world for a house, and the worst for a grave.
Born with them—born with them : all alike ! No pleasure equal to the pleasure of tormenting, to a woman.
Theresa
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)
Sympathy is the surest destruction of selfishness. Children, like the grown person, grow the better for participation in the sufferings where their own only share is pity.
The Twin Sisters
He had married for love, under the frequent delusion of supposing that love will last under every circumstance most calculated to destroy it ; and, secondly, that it can supply the place of everything else.
Oh! moral of enjoyment! — scattered, crushed : —
The pale checks of the few that staid, like ghosts
Haunting the footsteps of departing mirth,
While the bright pictures over them looked down
Almost in mockery.
The peasant boy, who followed the coloured track of the rainbow, hoping to find the blue and charmed flower which springs where the arch touches earth, is wiser far than one who gives youth, genius, and time to literature.
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)
Music moves us, and we know not why;
We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.
Is it the language of some other state,
Born of its memory ? For what can wake
The soul's strong instinct of another world,
Like music?
The Golden Violet (1827)
Oh, who—reposed on some fond breast,
Love's own delicious place of rest—
Reading faith in the watching eyes,
Feeling the heart beat with its sighs,
Could know regrets, or doubts, or cares,
That we had bound our fate with theirs!
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
That day the youth was told the tale,
How she had pined beneath the veil
And died, and then they show'd her grave—
He knew that cypress's green wave. —
That night, alone, he watched his bride —
The next they laid him by her side.
The earth was parched, the trees were sear'd,
And blasted every branch appear'd;
At one end yawned a gloomy cave,
Black, as its mouth were that of the grave;
And dark, as if the waters of death
Were in its depths, rose a well beneath.
The Golden Violet (1827)
What is the light from yon deep wood flashing —
What the sound on the wild wind borne ?
What the dark ranks that are onwards dashing
To the voice of the pealing horn ?
Who are they that thundering go ? —
It is the Black Hunt of the bold Litzou !
Pride misers with enjoyment, when we have
Delight in things that are but of the mind:
But half humility when we partake
Pleasures that are half wants, the spirit pines
And struggles in its fetters, and disdains
The low base clay to which it is allied.
The Golden Violet (1827)
I speak of my own feelings—I can judge
Of others but by outward show, and that
Is falser than the actor's studied part.
We dress our words and looks in borrow'd robes:
The mind is as the face—for who goes forth
In public walks without a veil at least?
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Methinks we must have known some former state
More glorious than our present, and the heart
Is haunted with dim memories, shadows left
By past magnificence; and hence we pine
With vain aspirings, hopes that fill the eyes
With bitter tears for their own vanity.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
In a valley sweet with singing
From the hill and from the wood,
Where the green moss rills were springing,
A wondrous maiden stood.
The first lark seemed to carry
Her coming through the air ;
Not long she wont to tarry,
Though she wandered none knew where.
There are remembrances that will not vanish,—
Thoughts of the past we would but cannot banish:
As if to show how impotent mere will,
We loathe the pang, and yet must suffer still:
For who is there can say they will forget?
—It is a power no science teaches yet.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)