Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
Florence Farr once said to me, If we could say to ourselves, with sincerity, ‘this passing moment is as good as any I shall ever know,’ we could die upon the instant and be united with God.
The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.
I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English.
The living can assist the imagination of the dead...
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.
It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike.
I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic’s heart.
Life moves out of a red flare of dreams Into a common light of common hours, Until old age brings the red flare again.
There is no deformity But saves us from a dream.
What’s memory but the ash That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Locke sank into a swoon; The Garden died; God took the spinning-jenny Out of his side.
Our words must seem to be inevitable.
The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!
He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.
The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves.