Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear.
Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on.
The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it.
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or recompense.
The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set; While, blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon, The cross leads generations on.
Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken.
Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; the subject, not the citizen... The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
What if English toil and blood Was poured forth, even as a flood? It availed, Oh, Liberty, To dim, but not extinguish thee.
The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other.
It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.
Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages.
... Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.
Thou art Justice ne'er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold As laws are in England thou Shield'st alike the high and low.
The thoughts which the word "God" suggests to the human mind are susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves.
My father Time is weak and gray With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands!
Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless Art thou let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness.
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing. A tone Of some world far from ours, where music and moonlight and feeling are one.
In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.
The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!
Be your strong and simple words Keen to wound as sharpened swords, And wide as targes let them be, With their shade to cover ye.
Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.
I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.
I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.
It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent them by regimen
As I lay asleep in Italy There came a voice from over the Sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.
And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, - To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress Its music.
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light,The night is good; because, my love,They never say good-night.
It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.
The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate.
Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the garden, That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden its aerial blue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.
And bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, - for I am Love's.
Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.
Sow seed--but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth--let no imposter heap; Weave robes--let not the idle wear; Forge arms--in your defence to bear.
First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too.
Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.
I am not much of a hand at love songs, you see I mingle metaphysics with even this, but perhaps in this age of Philosophy that may be excused.
Sounds of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Contemporary criticism only represents the amount of ignorance genius has to contend with. . . . Time will reverse the judgement of the vulgar.
Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth!
I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.