“Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.”

For love reflects the thing beloved.

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

What the sunshine is to the flower, the Lord Jesus Christ is to my soul.

And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.

There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass.

I can’t be anonymous by reason of your confounded photographs. (To Julia Margaret Cameron)

A beam in darkness: let it grow.

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.

A still small voice spake unto me, ‘Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?

The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

Things seen are mightier than things heard.

O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

Love will conquer at the last.

I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.

I wish the first word I ever said was the word “quote”, so right before I die I could say “unquote”.

I know one day I’ll be irrelevant. No matter how hard you try there is a cultural moment, but eventually that window’s gone, your time on Earth is finished, and you might as well leave. I could absolutely die tomorrow – I would not care. I feel like I’ve lived, I feel like I’ve had a great life.

Never return to a doctor whose office plants have died. After five days in hospital, I took a turn for the nurse.

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one’s faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one’s life.

We are all just humans trying to survive in this crazy world, in the spaces between birth and death.

The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.

I could lose myself in you or die blissfully, trying.