“When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid – in which case all comment is superfluous – or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.”

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won.

There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.

The jealous keys of truth’s eternal doors.

Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes – are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry.

All love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

Heaven’s ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.

I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers.

When the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead – When the cloud is scattered The rainbow’s glory is shed.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

It is not a merit to tolerate, but rather a crime to be intolerant.

Sometimes The Devil is a gentleman.

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.

Love’s very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.

The beauty of fragrance is that it speaks to your heart and hopefully someone else’s.

The pure soul is a beautiful rose, and the Three Divine Persons descend from Heaven to inhale its fragrance.

When we receive Holy Communion, we experience something extraordinary – a joy, a fragrance, a well-being that thrills the whole body and causes it to exalt.

When our hands have touched spices, they give fragrance to all they handle. Let us make our prayers pass through the hands of the Blessed Virgin. She will make them fragrant.

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

Fragrance is an incredibly intimate thing. It can evoke very specific thoughts or memories and is a little different for each person who wears it. I also think it’s the most accessible luxury.

Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive.

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.