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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 hundreds soon hit:
His high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
Topic: Action
Source: A Grammarian's Funeral
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men
to do nothing.
Topic: Action
Source: A Grammarian's Funeral
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What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me.
Topic: Ambition
Source: None
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It is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.
Topic: Art
Source: The Ring and the Book--The Book and the Ring (l. 842)
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Autumn wins you best by this, its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Topic: Autumn
Source: Paracelsus (sc. 1)
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All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower.
Topic: Buttercups
Source: Home Thoughts--From Abroad
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Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
Topic: Change
Source: Rabbi Ben Ezra (st. 27)
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No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something.
Topic: Character
Source: Men and Women--Bishop Blougram's Apology
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There's a woman like a dew-drop,
She's so purer than the purest.
Topic: Chastity
Source: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (act I, sc. 3)
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Feast of Etheldreda, Abbess of Ely, c.678 Continuing a short series on authenticity: For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; But the main thing is, does it hold good measure? Heaven soon sets right all other matters.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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It's wiser being good than bad;
It's safer being meek than fierce:
It's fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.
Topic: Comparisons
Source: Apparent Failure (VII)
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One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to flight better,
Sleep to wake.
Topic: Courage
Source: Epilogue--Asolando
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Day!
Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last;
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Topic: Day
Source: Introduction to Pippa Passes
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'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do.
Topic: Deeds
Source: Saul (XVIII)
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When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?
Topic: Drinking
Source: The Flight of the Duchess (XVI)
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It's a long time between drinks.
Topic: Drinking
Source: The Flight of the Duchess (XVI)
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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.
Topic: England
Source: Home Thoughts from Abroad
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To me at least was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.
Topic: Evening
Source: The Ring and the Book--Pompilia (l. 357)
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A face to lose youth for, to occupy age
With the dream of, meet death with.
Topic: Faces
Source: A Likeness
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Good, to forgive;
Best to forget.
Topic: Forgiveness
Source: La Saisiaz--Prologue
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Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat;
Found the one gift of which Fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote.
Topic: Fortune
Source: The Lost Leader, referring to Wordsworth when he turned Tory
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Let my hand,
This hand, lie in your own--my own true friend;
Aprile! Hand-in-hand with you, Aprile!
Topic: Friends
Source: Paracelsus (sc. 5)
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Hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
And great hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.
Topic: Friendship
Source: Saul (st. 7)
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And gain is gain, however small.
Topic: Gain
Source: None
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So may glory from defect arise.
Topic: Glory
Source: Deaf and Dumb
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My star, God's glowworm.
Topic: Glowworms
Source: Popularity
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There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as
before;
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.
Topic: Goodness
Source: Abt Vogler (IX)
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What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets;
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
Topic: Growth
Source: A Death in the Desert (l. 447)
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Dear, dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the
gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms?
Topic: Hair
Source: Men and Women--A Toccata of Galuppi's (st. 15)
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Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
Topic: Heaven
Source: Andrea del Sarto (l. 97)
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Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
Topic: Heaven
Source: None
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Then I cast loose my buff coat, each halter let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise bad or good,
'Til at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
Topic: Horses
Source: How They Brought the News from Ghent
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Love, hope, fear, faith--these make humanity;
These are its sign and note and character.
Topic: Humanity
Source: Paracelsus (sc. 3)
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Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
Topic: Ignorance
Source: None
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If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day.
Topic: Immortality
Source: Paracelsus (last lines)
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From the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea.
Topic: Islands
Source: Cleon
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Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me--
(When fortune's malice
Lost her Calais)--
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy."
Topic: Italy
Source: Men and Women--"De Gustibus"
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God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,
Rests never on the track until it reach
Delinquency.
Topic: Justice
Source: Ceuciaja
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice,
neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Topic: Justice
Source: Ceuciaja
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So free we seem, so fettered fast we are.
Topic: Liberty
Source: None
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Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
Topic: Man
Source: Andrea del Sarto (l. 97)
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Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.
Topic: Mind
Source: Paracelsus (II)
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I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God--the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures;
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward, Nature's good
And God's.
Topic: Nature
Source: A Soul's Tragedy (act I)
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I give the fight up; let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me,
I want to be forgotten even by God.
Topic: Obscurity
Source: Paracelsus (pt. V)
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The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land,
Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.
Topic: Ocean
Source: Luria (act I)
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This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it forever.
Topic: Opportunity
Source: Youth and Art (XVII)
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For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
Topic: Paradoxes
Source: Rabbi-Ben-Ezra (st. 7)
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Only I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
Topic: Passion
Source: Two in the Campagna (st. 12)
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But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?
Topic: Past
Source: Balaustion's Adventure
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But there are times when patience proves at fault.
Topic: Patience
Source: Paracelsus (sc. 3)
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