“I can’t sleep without knowing there’s hope. Half the night I waste in sighs. In a wakeful doze I sorrow. For the hands, for the lips… the eyes. For the meeting of tomorrow.”

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?

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

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.

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.

Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast, Drowning love’s lonely hour in deep twilight of rest.

A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books– I trow that countenance cannot lye Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,’ he answered. ‘Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?

All the dreams you planted in my eyes, will someday haunt you alive.

I would steal the sun, if that is what it took to bring the light back into your eyes.

A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and enflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them that he would give all his life to possess ’em.