Quotes to inspire and reflect

Since when was genius found respectable?

I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls.

I should not dare to call my soul my own.

A little sunburnt by the glare of life.

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Makes awful lightning.

Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But there The silver answer rang—“Not Death, but Love.”

Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render praise and favor.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless.

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain, Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakespeare’s strain.

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. 1

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.

It is time to be old, To take in sail.

Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

Today unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

“Pass in, pass in,” the angels say, “In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.”

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good fame, Plans, credit and the Muse, Nothing refuse.

Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.

Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled— Law for man, and law for thing.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

Things are of the snake.

In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods.

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow.

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew— The conscious stone to beauty grew.

I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.

It was a dark and stormy night. 1

Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home; Thou art not my friend and I’m not thine.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword.

Rank is a great beautifier.

It is thy very energy of thought Which keeps thee from thy God.

To rise at six, to dine at ten, To sup at six, to sleep at ten, Makes a man live for ten times ten.