Quotes to inspire and reflect

Ignorance is not innocence but sin.

A secret’s safe ’Twixt you, me, and the gatepost!

That far land we dream about, Where every man is his own architect.

A man in armor is his armor’s slave.

You never know what life means till you die: Even throughout life, ’tis death that makes life live, Gives it whatever the significance.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life’s business being just the terrible choice.

The curious crime, the fine Felicity and flower of wickedness.

Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i’ the dark to rise by. And I rise.

All poetry is difficult to read, —The sense of it is, anyhow.

’Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ: Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

That’s all we may expect of man, this side The grave: his good is—knowing he is bad.

O Lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire.

’Tis because stiffish cock-tail, taken in time, Is better for a bruise than arnica.

We find great things are made of little things, And little things go lessening till at last Comes God behind them.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold.

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face.

How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!

The best way to escape His ire Is, not to seem too happy.

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! ’Thinketh, He dwelleth i’ the cold o’ the moon.

Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, Not God’s, and not the beasts’: God is, they are; Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

Look not thou down but up!

Such ever was love’s way: to rise, it stoops.

What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me.

Therefore I summon age To grant youth’s heritage.

Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand.

The C Major of this life.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard.

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

We’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted—better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that.

Rafael made a century of sonnets.

Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?

’Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man would do!

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord.

No, when the fight begins within himself, A man’s worth something.

You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o’ercomes doubt.

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demirep That loves and saves her soul in new French books.

Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset touch, A fancy from a flower bell, someone’s death, A chorus ending from Euripides.

Truth that peeps Over the glasses’ edge when dinner’s done.

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone’s, Is—not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be—but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means.

I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?

Less is more. 3

Days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything.