209 quotes
Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he —
Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C!
That he, who many a year, with toil of breath,
Found death in life, may here find life in death.
Religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye of reason has reached its own horizon; faith is then but its continuation, even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight; and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness.
But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare to force his way out of the crowd,—not of the mere vulgar,—but of the vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?
Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811)
Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine word which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and feelings.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
It is every day's practice with us to decide cases which turn upon the laws of foreign countries, or the laws administered in Courts of peculiar jurisdiction in this country. Of this we have no judicial knowledge; but we acquire the necessary knowledge by evidence.
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair —
The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing —
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Work without Hope (1825)
As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
A solitary cell;
And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in Hell.
He saw a Lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill hard by his own stable;
And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother, Abel.
God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table; & hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door, to put in his claim for a part of it.
Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the key-stone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done, the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni (1802)
The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity.
On the Principles of Genial Criticism (1814)
Verse, a Breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni (1802)
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows;
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is the poison tree, that pierced to the inmost
Weeps only tears of poison.
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place
(Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"
The happiness of life ... is made up of minute fractions — the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Kubla Khan (1797)
Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!
Christabel (1797)
Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the Heart, the Moral Nature, was the Beginning and the End; and that Truth, Knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.
Aids to Reflection (1825)