190 quotes
Better have failed in the high aim, as I,
Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed,—
As, God be thanked! I do not.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
Paracelsus (1835)
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men.
Dramatis Personae (1864)
Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
A Toccata of Galuppi's (1855)
I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
At the 'Mermaid (1876)
We loved, sir — used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was —
But then, how it was sweet!
Her voice changed like a bird's:
There grew more of the music, and less of the words.
All service ranks the same with God,—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.
Pippa Passes (1841)
The ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!
A Death in the Desert (1864)
Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.
Paracelsus (1835)
No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.
Of what I call God,
And fools call Nature.
Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
A Death in the Desert (1864)
The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own,
Some stealthy tricks to better beasts unknown
That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts
And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts.
Sordello (1840)
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
Dramatis Personae (1864)
And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift,
Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone,
While Northern thought is slow and durable.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault,
Law bends a brow maternally severe,
Implies the worth of perfect chastity,
By fancying the flaw she cannot find.
The Ring and the Book (1868)
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Dramatis Personae (1864)
Sky—what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
So men believe
And worship what they know not, nor receive
Delight from.
Sordello (1840)