Quotes to inspire and reflect

But all was false and hollow; though his tongue

To perish rather, swallowed up and lost

Pandemonium, the high capital

Let none admire

Who overcomes

Mammon led them on,

And when night

A shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond

First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

What though the field be lost?

The mind is its own place, and in itself

What in me is dark

The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

Rhyme being … but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre.

The troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,

New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.

Time is our tedious song should here have ending.

So when the sun in bed,

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet.

It was the winter wild,

For what can war, but endless war still breed?

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:

Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

But that two-handed engine at the door

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.

Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorrèd shears,

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,

Let us with a gladsome mind

Such sights as youthful poets dream

Where perhaps some beauty lies,

Towered cities please us then,

Meadows trim with daisies pied,

Come, and trip it as ye go

Nods, and becks, and wreathèd smiles.

Hence, loathèd Melancholy,

And storied windows richly dight,

Hide me from day’s garish eye.

Far from all resort of mirth,

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,