Quotes to inspire and reflect

For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.

To fight aloud, is very brave— But gallanter, I know Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe—

Behold the life at ease; it drifts, The sharpened life commands its course.

Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the Culprit— Life!

Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, passes.

With patient inattention hear him prate.

The song seraphically free Of taint of personality.

For singing till his heaven fills, ’Tis love of earth that he instills, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which over flows To lift us with him as he goes.

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life!

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.

Not till the fire is dying in the grate, Look we for any kinship with the stars. Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold, And the great price we pay for it full worth; We have it only when we are half earth.

And if I drink oblivion of a day, So shorten I the stature of my soul.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find thy body by the wall.

Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.

Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said!

Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean.

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I.

That sweet city [Oxford] with her dreaming spires.

Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays! Here came I often, often, in old days— Thyrsis [Arthur Hugh Clough] and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.

Her cabined, ample spirit It fluttered and failed for breath. Tonight it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade.

Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne.

Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven: and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed… Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won today— Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill.

But often in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life.

And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!

The day in its hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm.

Yes, in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone .

Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

So, loath to suffer mute, We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear.

We do not what we ought; What we ought not, we do; And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through.

Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play; Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.

Be neither saint- nor sophist-led, but be a man!

Thou hast no right to bliss.

Hither and thither spins The windborne, mirroring soul; A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.

Calm Soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city’s jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and can not mar.

We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides.

Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.