Quotations by Gerard Manley Hopkins

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, VICTORIAN POET, WHOSE POETRY REVOLVES AROUND RELIGION, NATURE, AND MELANCHOLY.

“The best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribed to
The holy Three in One.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Summa

“All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Journal (24 February 1873)

“A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Letter to Robert Bridges (13 October 1886)

“Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter's robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Easter

“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief

“Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins,The Wreck of the Deutschland

“ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Habit of Perfection

“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring

“I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Heaven-Haven

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

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Rudyard Kipling Quick Facts

Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, novelist and story writer of the late Victorian period.

Profile

• Birth Name: Joseph Rudyard Kipling
• Date of Birth: December 30, 1865
• Place of Birth: Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
• Zodiac Sign: Capricorn
• Death: January 18, 1936
• Place of Death: Middlesex Hospital, London, England
• Cause of Death: Duodenal ulcer
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: British
• Place of Burial: Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, London
• Gravestone Inscription:

“ KIPLING. BORN 30th DEC. 1865

 DIED 18th JAN. 1936.”

• Father: John Lockwood Kipling
• Mother: Alice Kipling (née MacDonald)
• Siblings:

1. Sister-Alice Kipling (1868–1948)
2. Brother-John Kipling (1870–1870)

• Sexual Orientation: Straight
• Spouse: Caroline Starr Balestier (m. 1892) (1862–1939)
• Children:

1. Daughter-Elsie Kipling (1896–1976)
2. Daughter-Josephine Kipling (1892–1899)
3. Son-John Kipling (1897–1915)

• Alma Mater: United Services College
• Known for: his brilliant storytelling capability, reflected especially in his tale of children
• Rudyard Kipling was criticized for: his celebration of British imperialism
• Rudyard Kipling was influenced by: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 –1894), H. Rider Haggard (1856 –1925), Joel Chandler Harris (1848 –1908), and Ibn Tufail (c. 1105 – 1185).
• Kipling’s Works Inspired:  NA

Notable Awards

• Nobel Prize in literature (1907)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature (1926)

Quotes

“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.”
Rudyard Kipling, Under The Deodars

Did You Know?

• Rudyard Kipling was the eldest child to John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Kipling.
• His father was an art teacher, illustrator and museum curator.
• Kipling was the first to use Cockney dialect in serious poetry.
• Kipling was named after the Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England.
• Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.
• Kipling was the first English to receive the prestigious Nobel Prize.
• Kipling is the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature to date.
• His Nobel Prize citation reads: “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author”.
• Kipling’s first collection of poetry Departmental Ditties was published in 1886.
• His first collection of prose Plain Tales from the Hills was published in 1888 in Calcutta.
• The ashes of Kipling were buried in Poets' Corner next to the graves of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
• In 1892, Rudyard Kipling married Caroline Starr Balestier.
• Kipling's daughter Josephine died from influenza at the age of six.
• His son, John was killed at the Battle of Loos while serving with the British Army during the First World War.

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Quotations by George Gordon Byron

George Gordon Byron, (1788 –1824), was a major English poet and one of the influential representatives of the Romantic Movement.

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes...”

~ George Gordon Byron, She Walks in Beauty

“Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood.”

~ George Gordon Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”

~ George Gordon Byron, Don Juan, Canto III

“ When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past—
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove—
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.”

~ George Gordon Byron, The First Kiss of Love,

“In secret we met
 In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
 Thy spirit deceive.
 If I should meet thee
 After long years,
 How should I greet thee?
 With silence and tears.”

~ George Gordon Byron,  When We Two Parted (1808)

“And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.”

~ George Gordon Byron, And Thou Art Dead as Young and Fair (1812).

“I am the very slave of circumstance
And impulse — borne away with every breath!
Misplaced upon the throne — misplaced in life.
I know not what I could have been, but feel
I am not what I should be — let it end.”

~ George Gordon Byron, Sardanapalus

“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”

~ George Gordon Byron, Manfred

“Though the day of my Destiny's over,
And the star of my Fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find.”

~ George Gordon Byron,   Stanzas to Augusta

“The world is a bundle of hay,
Mankind are the asses that pull,
Each tugs in a different way—
And the greatest of all is John Bull!”

~ George Gordon Byron,   Letter to Thomas Moore (22 June 1821).

“My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!”

~ George Gordon Byron,   On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

“Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!”

~ George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

“He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

~ George Gordon Byron,The Giaour

“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone.”

~ George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
of human cities torture.”

~ George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree
I planted,—they have torn me,—and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”

~ George Gordon Byron, I. Personal, Lyric, and Elegiac England

“Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life.
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints tomorrow with prophetic ray!”

~ George Gordon Byron, The Bride of Abydos, Canto II, stanza 20

“Death, so call’d, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass’d in sleep.”

~ George Gordon Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIV

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“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as a Modern Poem

Modernism is a movement in literature that lasted from roughly the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. The era marked landmark progress in science and technology, industrialization and globalization. Although these are all indicatives of modernism, the modernist writers, however, diverted their interest into otherwise. Their prime objective was to highlight the potential incongruities underneath the surface advancement. They observed that with the increased reliance on science and technology, and the gradual removal of the individual from rural community into urban isolation, the individual and society were at odds with one another. Moreover, they also witnessed that the devastation caused by the World War I left the civilization declined rather than improved.

T.S. Eliot is one of the pioneering literary figures of the modernist movement. In his works he opted to infuse the trending issues of his time. Eliot’s earliest tour de force, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, indicated a groundbreaking literary shift from late 19th-century Romantic poetry to Modernism. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock encapsulates nearly all of the major tenets of the subject movement:

Free Verse

The modernists significantly deviated from the strict meter formulated by the Romantic school of poetry. They preferred free verse which follows neither a rhyme scheme nor a consistent meter. To be relevant to the era The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is also composed in free verse. However, the poem does not fully follow the free verse; rather it adheres to some formal rhymes as well.

Stream of Consciousness

Stream of consciousness is a popular mode of narration in the modern era. The modernist writers often used this technique to perplex the audience, by leaving things vague or unexplained. That is why works narrated by this technique are often difficult to follow. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock also employs the stream of consciousness technique to present the inner thoughts or anguish of a neurotic, isolated, hesitant, and cynical man named Prufrock. The aforesaid subject clearly releases his indecisive thoughts in the following lines:

“And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

Alienation

Alienation is one of the central themes in the modern era. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock also hinges around this theme. The poet explores alienation through the title character Prufrock, who is paralyzed by indecision and worry about his appearance to others, particularly to women. His inability to properly express his love and fears of rejection supersede his natural desire to be with a woman, which in turn created an awkward and isolated character that is aloof from society. Prufrock believes that his paralysis has stemmed from the silent criticism of those around him, and thus he thinks that he will be free of his paralyzing fear once he isolates himself from others. This idea is further reinforced by his wandering at dusk through the narrow back alleys of the seedier side of the city where the only beings are the common class people. Since here he is isolated from the people he knows, he finds the most comfort in the company of complete strangers:

“Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...”

Urban Setting

The modernists significantly deviated from the Romantics in the matter of choosing the setting. Whereas the former used a rural setting to explore nature from the emotional or imaginary point of view, the latter employed an urban setting to portray the city life realistically with its hustle and bustle. Eliot also followed his contemporaries and confined his TheLove Song of J. Alfred Prufrock within an urban setting which is evident in the following lines:

“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”

Allusion

The majority of the modernist works are replete with allusions, an expression which enabled the writers to encapsulate the entire theme, mood, feeling and plot of those other stories, with just one word or phrase. Eliot also used allusions extravagantly in his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which heightened the symbolic as well as the ironic mode of expression. For example:

• The very title of the poem reverberates to Rudyard Kipling’s Love Song of Har Dyal, although in a rather ironic way. While Kipling’s poem is a typical love song expressing an Englishman's passion and love for his Indian lover, Eliot’s poem is a mockery of the love song, portraying the protagonist’s many failed attempts at courting women.
• Eliot starts the poem with an epigraph drawn from the 27th canto of Dante’s Inferno to suggest the theme of secrecy. The epigraph refers to a meeting in which Guido da Montefeltro speaks with a sense of secrecy to Dante, just as Prufrock speaks with a sense of secrecy to the “you” mentioned in the poem’s very first lines:

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;”

• In lines 94-95, Eliot alludes to Lazarus, a biblical character, who was sent to Hell but he wanted to come back to the earth in order to tell his friend about experiences in Hell. In the same way, Prufrock is living in such a place where he seems to be dead:

“I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

• Eliot repetitively refers to Michelangelo to portray the boring nature of a social event where no one really cares what is being said, pointlessly mingling among themselves while they try to figure out interesting bits of conversation to mention:
  

“In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.”

• In lines 111-119, Prufrock considers himself to be Prince Hamlet, the title character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. However, soon he declares that he does not have the potentialities of Hamlet and that he is more of a side character like Polonius who could be confused for a fool who appears in a scene or two:

“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.”

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Quotations by Emily Brontë

EMILY JANE BRONTË WAS AN ENGLISH NOVELIST AND POET WHOSE REPUTATION CHIEFLY RESTS UPON HER ONLY NOVEL, WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.  But, if you be ashamed of your touchiness, you must ask pardon, mind, when she comes in.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“A person who has not done one-half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?”

~ Emily Brontë, Love and Friendship

“I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be: that proves I love him better than myself.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it.  I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.  So much the worse for me that I am strong.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town.  A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“… you have left me so long to struggle against death alone, that I feel and see only death!  I feel like death!”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!  Why am I so changed? … I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. ”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat!”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees.  My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.  Nelly, I am Heathcliff!  He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “Honest people don't hide their deeds.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says.  I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “… heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “… he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, … but because he’s more myself than I am.  Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.  And this is one: I’m going to tell it—but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

 “… he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ...”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!  Oh, God! it is unutterable!  I cannot live without my life!  I cannot live without my soul!”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad, … and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.”

~ Emily Brontë, The night is darkening round me

“… treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

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Quotations by D.H. Lawrence

D.H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930) WAS AN INFLUENTIAL ENGLISH NOVELIST, ESSAYIST, POET, AND CRITIC OF THE 20^TH CENTURY.

“Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, The Complete Poems

 “A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Letter to John Middleton Murry, 1913

 “One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, like any Knight of the Grail, and the journey is always towards the other soul, not away from it.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Thomas Dunlop, July 7, 1914

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923

“But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“The human soul needs beauty more than bread.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Nottingham and the Mining Countryside (1921)

“Those that go searching for love
only make manifest their own lovelessness,
and the loveless never find love,
only the loving find love,
and they never have to seek for it.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Search for Love

“Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

 “I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams. It is very queer. But my dreams make conclusions for me. They decide things finally. I dream a decision. Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer me them as dreams.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett, January 29, 1012

“When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

“Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.
Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.
And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Liberty’s Old Story

“The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has got dozens.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia

“The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

“For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.”

~ D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“… human desire is the criterion of all truth and all good. Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling. There is really nothing to fear. The motive of fear in religion is base...”

~ D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow

“Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.”

 ~ D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, 1915

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Quotations by Kingsley Amis

KINGSLEY AMIS (1922-1995), AN ENGLISH NOVELIST, POET, CRITIC, AND TEACHER.

“A man's sexual aim, he had often said to himself, is to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature that is the opposite of these; to demonstrate to an animal which is pretending not to be an animal that it is an animal.”

~ Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing

“Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescence, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage

“The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Stanley and the Women

“It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.”

~ Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman (1963)

“How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking

“Wives and such are constantly filling up any refrigerator they have a claim on, even its ice-compartment, with irrelevant rubbish like food.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking

“He thought how much he liked her and had in common with her, and how much she'd like and have in common with him if she only knew him.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“When the bishop farted we were amused to hear about it. Should the ploughboy find treasure we must be told. But when the ploughboy farts... er... keep it to yourself.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing

“It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

“For a moment he felt like devoting the next ten years to working his way to a position as art critic on purpose to review Bertrand's work unfavorably.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern English Usage

“Nothing short of physical handicap has ever made anybody turn over a new leaf.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

“I thought to myself how much more welcome a faculty the imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not.”

~ Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

“The human race has not devised any way of dissolving barriers, getting to know the other chap fast, breaking the ice, that is one-tenth as handy and efficient as letting you and the other chap, or chaps, cease to be totally sober at about the same rate in agreeable surroundings.”

~ Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis

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Quotations by Philip Larkin

PHILIP LARKIN (1922–1985) WAS A RENOWNED POET AND NOVELIST IN POSTWAR ENGLAND.

“So many things I had thought forgotten
 Return to my mind with stranger pain:
- Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago.”

~ Philip Larkin, Why Did I Dream of You Last Night?

“Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.”

~ Philip Larkin, Best Society

“… it never worked for me.
Something to do with violence
A long way back, and wrong rewards,
And arrogant eternity.”

~ Philip Larkin, Love Again

“This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.”

~ Philip Larkin, “XXVI,” The North Ship

“I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action.”

~ Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

~ Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“Morning, noon & bloody night,
Seven sodding days a week,
I slave at filthy WORK, that might
Be done by any book-drunk freak.
This goes on until I kick the bucket.
FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT”

~ Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.”

~ Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“… In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures ...”

~ Philip Larkin, Faith Healing

“Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”

~ Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse

“Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.”

~ Philip Larkin, Dockery and Son

 “One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the same day as we do ourselves.”

~ Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“… we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time”

~ Philip Larkin, The Mower

“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

~ Philip Larkin, High Windows

“Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forwith, and we
Divide...”

~ Philip Larkin, Since The Majority Of Me

“Only in books the flat and final happens
Only in dreams we meet and interlock,”

~ Philip Larkin, Observation (1941)

“Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.”

~ Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings

“The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke...
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.”

~ Philip Larkin, High Windows

“Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.”

~ Philip Larkin, MCMXIV

“And I am sick for want of sleep;
So sick, that I can half-believe
The soundless river pouring from the cave
Is neither strong nor deep;
Only an image fancied in conceit.”

~ Philip Larkin, “XVI”, The North Ship

“Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.”

~ Philip Larkin, An Arundel Tomb

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”

~ Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings

“I would not dare
Console you if I could. What can be said,
Except that suffering is exact, but where
Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?”

~ Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived

“Living toys are something novel,
But it soon wears off somehow.”

~ Philip Larkin, Take One Home for the Kiddies

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Quotations by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861) IS ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED ENGLISH POETS OF THE VICTORIAN ERA.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

“Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing, ―
Love me in the Lightest part,
Love me in full Being.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Man’s Requirements

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,          
And every common bush afire with God;        
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,     
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

“You were made perfectly to be loved and surely I have loved you in the idea of you my whole life long.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845-1846

“The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds that play,
Among the lowing of the herd,
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Out In The Fields With God

“Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat... or a girl?”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book II, line 732.

“Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars, ―
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, But Only Three in All God’s Universe (Sonnet 2)

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1845-1846

“I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud ―
I build it bright to see, ―
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The House of Clouds

“Will that light come again,
As now these tears come―falling hot and real?”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I See Thine Image through My Tears To-Night (Sonnet 30)

“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me―wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, If I Leave All for Thee, Wilt Thou Exchange (Sonnet 35)

“All actual heroes are essential men,
And all men possible heroes…”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book Five

“How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing—of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, My poet, Thou Canst Touch on All the Notes (Sonnet 17)

“The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete,—
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Dead Roses

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Quotations by Herman Melville

HERMAN MELVILLE, A 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELIST, POET AND WRITER OF SHORT STORY, WHO IS REMEMBERED MOSTLY FOR HIS NOVEL MOBY-DICK.

“Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

 “It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.”

~ Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure..... Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle , and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

 “A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”

~ Herman Melville, Pierre: or, the Ambiguities

 “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“...there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.”

~ Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. ”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

~ Herman Melville, Pierre or the Ambiguities

“…for it is often to be observed of the shallower men, that they are the very last to despond. It is the glory of the bladder that nothing can sink it; it is the reproach of a box of treasure, that once overboard it must drown”

~ Herman Melville, Pierre: or, the Ambiguities

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Doesn't the devil live forever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any person wearing mourning for the devil?”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

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Quotations by O. Henry

O. HENRY, THE PSEUDONYM OF WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER (1862 –1910), WAS A PROMINENT AMERICAN SHORT STORY WRITER, BEST KNOWN FOR HIS IRONIC PLOT TWISTS AND SURPRISE ENDINGS.

“To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.”

~ O. Henry, A Retrieved Reformation

“If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.”

~ O. Henry, The Four Million

“The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.”

~ O. Henry, The Green Door

 “Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.”

~ O. Henry, Selected Stories

“She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the
air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.”

~ O. Henry, The Complete Life of John Hopkins

 “No friendship is an accident.”

~ O. Henry, Heart of the West

“All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another’s presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best.”

~ O. Henry, An Early Parable

“I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.”

~ O. Henry, The Complete Works of O. Henry

“The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.”

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.”

~ O. Henry, Selected Stories

“The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.”

~ O. Henry, The Cactus

“There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.”

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“He studied cities as women study their reflections.”

~ O. Henry, The Best Short Stories of O. Henry

“Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.”

~ O. Henry, The Voice of the City

"There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating."

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

"But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat--the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions--ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable--the mutual help and inspiration; and--overlook my artlessness--stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m."

~ O. Henry, The Four Million

“But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.”

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something.”

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.”

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“Knowledge is a strong stream of water turned on us through a hose. It disturbs our roots.”

~ O. Henry, The Higher Pragmatism

"Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you..."

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“In front the sea was spread, a smiling jailer, but even more incorruptible than the frowning mountains.”

~ O. Henry, Cabbages and Kings

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Quotations by William Blake

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827), ENGLISH ENGRAVER, ARTIST, MYSTIC AND A SEMINAL POETIC FIGURE OF THE 19^TH CENTURY ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

~ William Blake, The Tyger

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”

~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
  For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair”

~ William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble

“My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.”

~ William Blake, Infant Sorrow

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”

~ William Blake, Proverbs of Hell from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.”

~ William Blake, Eternity

“The buried soul and all its gems.      
This life’s five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,        
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro’, the eye”

~ William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel

“And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,”

~ William Blake, The Little Black Boy

“Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“Never seek to tell thy love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently invisibly”

~ William Blake, Never Seek to Tell thy Love

“For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress”

~ William Blake, The Divine Image

“The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time,
Love, sweet Love, was thought a crime!”

~ William Blake, A Little Girl Lost

“And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.”

~ William Blake, A Poison Tree

“I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.”

~ William Blake, Jerusalem

“The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent”

~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“The nakedness of woman is the work of God.”

~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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Quotations by John Keats

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) WAS A MAJOR ENGLISH POET OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”

~ John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

 “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;”

~ John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

“… life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit;…”

~ John Keats, Sleep and Poetry

“Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;”

~ John Keats, A Song of Opposites

“To Sorrow,
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.”

~ John Keats, Endymion

“And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain.
The lady's heart beat quick, and he could see
Her gentle bosom heave tumultuously.
He sprang from his green covert: there she lay,
Sweet as a muskrose upon new-made hay;
With all her limbs on tremble, and her eyes
Shut softly up alive.”

~ John Keats, Endymion

“This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.”

~ John Keats, This Living Hand

“And when thou art weary I’ll find thee a bed
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head;”

~ John Keats, To Emma

“Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free”

~ John Keats, What can I do to drive away

“Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;
Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;
Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees:
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees,
In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed,
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.”

~ John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes

“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.”

~ John Keats, When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

~ John Keats, Endymion: A Poetic Romance

“When by my solitary hearth I sit,
When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.”

~ John Keats, To Hope

“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

~ John Keats, Bright Star

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death”

~ John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

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Quotations by Jane Austen

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) IS A LEADING 19TH CENTURY ENGLISH NOVELIST.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

~ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

~ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”

~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”

~ Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.
It is something to think of”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”

~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.”

~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.”

~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I have never been in love ; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.”

~ Jane Austen, Emma

“It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best”

~ Jane Austen, Emma

“An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be done.”

~Jane Austen,  Mansfield Park

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Quotations by Robert Herrick

ROBERT HERRICK (1591–1674) WAS A 17TH-CENTURY ENGLISH CAVALIER POET, WHOSE WORK IS NOTED FOR ITS DIVERSITY OF FORM AND FOR ITS STYLE, MELODY, AND FEELING.

“Here we are all, by day; by night, we're hurled
By dreams, each one, into a several world.”

~ Robert Herrick, Dreams

“A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;”

~ Robert Herrick, Delight in Disorder

“Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;
Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:
A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,
To make that thousand up a million.
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun.”

~ Robert Herrick, To Anthea: Ah, My Anthea!

“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.”

~ Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

“Love is a circle that doth restless move
In the same sweet eternity of love.”

~ Robert Herrick, Love, What It Is

“If little labour, little are our gains:
Man's fortunes are according to his pains.”

~ Robert Herrick, No Pains, No Gains

“Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me;
And hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.”

~ Robert Herrick, To Anthea, who may Command him Anything

“And with our broth, and bread, and bits, sir friend,
You've fared well : pray make an end ;
Two days you've larded here ; a third, ye know,
Makes guests and fish smell strong ; pray go”

~ Robert Herrick, A Panegyric To Sir Lewis Pemberton, 1891

“Then this immensive cup
Of aromatic wine,
Catullus, I quaff up
To that terse muse of thine.”

~ Robert Herrick, To Live Merrily and to Trust to Good Verses

“Attempt the end and never stand to doubt;
Nothing's so hard, but search will find it out.”

~ Robert Herrick, Seek and Find

“HUMBLE we must be, if to heaven we go:  
High is the roof there; but the gate is low.”

~ Robert Herrick, Humility

“But here's the sunset of a tedious day,
These two asleep are; I'll but be undrest,
And so to bed. Pray wish us all good rest.”

~ Robert Herrick, Epitaph on the Tomb of Sir Edward Giles

“Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain'd his noon.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.”

~ Robert Herrick, To Daffodils

“Tears are the noble language of eye;
 And when true love of words is destitute,
 The eye by tears speak, while the tongue is mute.”

~ Robert Herrick, Tears are Tongues

“Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be,
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.”

~ Robert Herrick, To Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing

“Bid me despair, and I'll despair,
Under that cypress tree;
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E'en Death, to die for thee.”

~ Robert Herrick, To Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing

“Thus times do shift, each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.”

~ Robert Herrick, Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve

“'TIS not the food, but the content
That makes the table's merriment.”

~ Robert Herrick, Content, Not Cates

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