He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.Collection: Thinking
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.Collection: Depression
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.Collection: Keys
No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.Collection: Writing
We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."Collection: Truth
All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.Collection: Writing
I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky! How beautiful thou art!Collection: Beautiful
Four seasons fill the measure of the year; there are four seasons in the minds of men.Collection: Time
Let us away, my love, with happy speed; There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, - Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead. Awake! arise! my love and fearless be, For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.Collection: Home
His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.Collection: Religion
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.Collection: Mother
O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!Collection: Song
No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.Collection: Summer
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.Collection: Love
I wish to believe in immortality-I wish to live with you forever.Collection: Believe
Beauty is truth, truth beautyCollection: Beauty
There is a budding morrow in midnight.Collection: Inspirational
Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive.Collection: Flower
There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality.Collection: Heart
We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.Collection: Book
Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience.Collection: Failure
My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.... I never felt my mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole sensesCollection: Mind
You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.Collection: Moments
Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.Collection: Reality
It ought to come like the leaves to the trees, or it better not come at all.Collection: Tree
I will clamber through the clouds and exist.Collection: Clouds
O aching time! O moments big as years!Collection: Time
There is an old saying "well begun is half done"-'tis a bad one. I would use instead-Not begun at all 'til half done.Collection: Half
I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.Collection: Kissing
I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.Collection: Real
The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.Collection: Peace
It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shoresCollection: Whispering
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.Collection: Summer
I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.Collection: Wish
...I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become more acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.Collection: Silly
A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative.Collection: Life
A little noiseless noise among the leaves, Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.Collection: Silence
Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, Lover of loneliness, and wandering, Of upcast eye, and tender pondering! Thee must I praise above all other glories That smile us on to tell delightful stories.Collection: Dream
In the long vista of the years to roll,\\ Let me not see my country's honor fade;\\ Oh! let me see our land retain its soul!\\ Her pride in Freedom, and not Freedom's shade.Collection: Country
I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.Collection: Thinking
I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.Collection: Beautiful
Asleep in lap of legends old.Collection: Lap
This Grave contains all that was Mortal of a Young English Poet Who on his Death Bed in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies Desired these words to be engraved on his Tomb Stone "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water."Collection: Lying
Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.Collection: Dream
The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children.Collection: Nature