Quotes to inspire and reflect

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

Never glad confident morning again!

Just for a handful of silver he left us,

We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,

‘You’re wounded!’ ‘Nay,’ the soldier’s pride

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.

‘With this same key

Shakespeare unlocked his heart,’ once more!

That low man seeks a little thing to do,

Oh, to be in England

If you get simple beauty and naught else,

Open my heart and you will see

… Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone,

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.

How sad and bad and mad it was—

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

The grand Perhaps!

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee with the breath,

And lips say, ‘God be pitiful,’

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

Abortions will not let you forget.

If I should die, think only this of me:

History repeats itself; historians repeat one another.

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour.

Sweet wine of youth.

Unkempt about those hedges blows

These laid the world away; poured out the red

But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!

Be a governess! Better be a slave at once!

Reader, I married him.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.

The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.