190 quotes
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais):
"Open my heart, and you will see
Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'"
Men and Women (1855)
Rafael made a century of sonnets.
One Word More (1855)
Let my hand,
This hand, lie in your own—my own true friend;
Aprile! Hand-in-hand with you, Aprile!
... the mark
God sets on woman, signifying so
She should—shall peradventure—be divine.
For the preacher's merit or demerit,
It were to be wished that the flaws were fewer
In the earthen vessel, holding treasure,
But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
Heaven soon sets right all other matters!
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it;
Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!
One Word More (1855)
Good, to forgive;
Best to forget.
So may a glory from defect arise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.
The Ring and the Book (1868)
Say not "a small event!" Why "small"?
Costs it more pain that this ye call
A "great event" should come to pass
From that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!
Pippa Passes (1841)
So may glory from defect arise.
If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day.
Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
Paracelsus (1835)
O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire, —
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face, —
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory — to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, —
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
The Ring and the Book (1868)
So, Willy, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men — especially pipers!
And, whether they pipe us from rats or from mice,
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!
What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
A Death in the Desert (1864)