Quotes to inspire and reflect

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!

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!

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

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 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.

The C Major of this life.

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

Rafael made a century of sonnets.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

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

Less is more. 3

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

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it; This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred’s soon hit; This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him.

Days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

He ventured neck or nothing—heaven’s success Found, or earth’s failure.

He said, “What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever.”

Who knows but the world may end tonight?

The instant made eternity— And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, forever ride?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

What’s become of Waring Since he gave us all the slip?

To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up and begin again.

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new! 2

Escape me? Never— Beloved! While I am I, and you are you.

Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

Open my heart, and you will see Graved inside of it, “Italy.”

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke!

Let’s contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before, Love, —Only sleep!

The Savior at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off.

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the northwest died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay.

Oh, to be in England now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now!