“The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze; Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last.”

Hope is incredible to the slave of grief.

And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt, Left here without the light I loved so much, In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.

When the poet died his cat was put to death and mummified.

Often on earth the gentlest heart is fain To feed and banquet on another’s woe.

Hitherto your eyes have been darkened and you have looked too much, yes, far too much, upon the things of earth. If these so much delight you what shall be your rapture when you lift your gaze to things eternal!

Death is a sleep that ends our dreaming. Oh, that we may be allowed to wake before death wakes us.

Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear, And cry to her to speak from heaven’s sphere.

A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.

For style beyond the genius never dares.

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.

Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.

To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.

Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.

Alack our life, so beautiful to see, With how much ease life losest, in a day, What many years with pain and toil amassed!

To be able to say how much love, is love but little.

Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive.

That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?

Life goes on, even if two-headed and glowing faintly in the dark.

Those wise men knew God to be in things, and Divinity to be latent in Nature, working and glowing differently in different subjects and succeeding through diverse physical forms, in certain arrangements, in making them participants in her, I say, in her being, in her life and intellect.

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.

A wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish.

On a clear day, how it will astound you That the glow of your feelings outshines every star.