13 quotes
Like the cards which form a child's plaything palace, our pleasures are nicely balanced one upon the other.
Romance and Reality (1831)
There are some moments, the hues of which are like those on the wing of a butterfly — a touch brushes them away.
Francesca Carrara (1834)
The great happiness-secret, after all, is division. How dare we, in this vain, fleeting world, concentrate our whole freight of interest in one frail bark ?
Romance and Reality (1831)
He had been used to that greatest of mental pleasures — to have his thoughts often divined — always entered into.
Romance and Reality (1831)
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.
This hour will pass — all passes,
On this life's fleeting scene ;
But still the future glasses
All that the past has been.
THE present! it is but a drop from the sea
In the mighty depths of eternity.
I love it not—it taketh its birth
Too near to the dull and the common earth.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
What though our passing day but be
A bubble on eternity;
Small though the circle is, yet still
’Tis ours to colour at our will.
A blossom full of promise is life's joy,
That never comes to fruit; hope, for a time,
Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light,
And it looks flourishing—a little while,
Tis past, we know not whither, but 'tis gone—
And yet it is a wasted heart :
It is a wasted mind
That seeks not in the inner world
Its happiness to find ;
For happiness is like the bird
That broods above its nest,
And finds beneath its folded wings,
Life's dearest, and its best.
Time passed as time ever does when passed monotonously, that is, with a degree of rapidity which only astonishes us when it is recalled to mind by some chance circumstance. Time should he reckoned by events, not hours ; the heart is its truest time-piece, at least as concerns ourselves.
Francesca Carrara (1834)
The history of a minute — why, it would give a bird's-eye view of every possible variety in human existence. Wonderful the many events that are happening together — life and death — joy and sorrow— the great and the mean — the common and the rare — good and evil — are all in the record of that brief segment of time.
Francesca Carrara (1834)
Not to the present is our hour confined,
The great and shadowy future is assigned
To be the glorious empire of the mind.
The past was once the future, and it wrought
In the high presence of on-looking thought ;
All that we have, was by its efforts brought.
To-day creates to-morrow, and the tree
Of good or ill grows in past hours, what we
Make for the future — certain is to be.