13 quotes
Hope is a timid thing,
Fearful, and weak, and born in suffering;
At least, such Hope as human life can bring.
A great change in life is like a cold bath in winter — we all hesitate at the first plunge.
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 pleasure of change is opposed by that of habit ; and if we love best that to which we are accustomed, we like best that which is new.
Romance and Reality (1831)
They met with cold words, and yet colder looks:
Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought
The other only changed, himself the same.
The Improvisatrice (1824)
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.
Hope is love's happiness, but not its life;—
How many hearts have nourished a vain flame
In silence and in secret, though they knew
They fed the scorching fire that would consume them!
The Improvisatrice (1824)
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.