19th-century Poet Quotes

As for the common men apart, Who sweat to keep their common breath, And have no hour for books or art-- What dreams have these to hide from death!

Lola Ridge
Lola Ridge
A fire-mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jelly-fish and a saurian, And caves where the cave-men dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty And a face turned from the clod — Some call it Evolution, And others call it God.

I was like one who, having discovered the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should resolve to enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to mortal the secret of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at this moment. I destined myself to be a microscopist.

Fitz James O'Brien
Fitz James O'Brien
Man's evolution from the brute Affords him, with so many gains, Life, liberty and the pursuit Of peak-time buses, trams and trains.

But Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does. His genius is penetrative as cold midwinter entering every room, and making warmth shiver in ague fits. I think Shakespeare never errs in his logical sequence in character. He surprises us, seems unnatural to us, but because we have been superficial observers; while genius will disclose those truths to which we are blind.

Those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.

Marthe Bibesco
Marthe Bibesco
There's nothing in the world (that is in Trinity) To make us poets happy; — I detest Your Hebrew, Greek and heathenish Latinity, And Mathematics are a bore at best.

Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height Exploring all the dark, descries from far Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are.

When nothing was, then God was there,
Had nothing been God would have been;
My being has defeated me,
Had I not been, what would have been.

Ghalib
Ghalib
Electricity is the perpetual life motion of all material existence. It prevents stagnation and decay, and renews all changing forms and substances. By its positive and negative energy acting and reacting it produces and controls all the movements of visible and tangible things.

George Woodward Warder
George Woodward Warder
An albatross wheeling in circles, Sails with a wing to the clouds and a wing to the touch of the billow...

Oh! sing it in the light of freedom's morn,
Tho' tyrant wars have made the earth a grave;
The good, the great, and true, are, if so born,
And so with slaves, chains do not make the slave!

Nature-study if it is to be possible must begin, and if it is to be fruitful must end, in something which is not strictly the study of nature, but which we call Philosophy.

The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive.

I know you—a glance, and what you are
Sits-by-the-fire in my heart.
My Limousine-Lady knows you, or
Why does the slant-envy of her eye mark
Your straight air and radiant inclusive smile?
Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adoring.

Anne Spencer
Anne Spencer
The West for me means ambition, the East contentment. My heart is ever in one, my soul in the other.

Ameen Rihani
Ameen Rihani
Such things and deeds as are not written down are covered with darkness, and given over to the sepulchre of oblivion.

Ivan Bunin
Ivan Bunin
Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is bidden.

Richard Realf
Richard Realf
Since I have felt the sense of death,
Since I have borne its dread, its fear — Oh, how my life has grown more dear
Since I have felt the sense of death!
Sorrows are good, and cares are small,
Since I have known the loss of all.

The young don't know what age is, and the old forget what youth was.

It came as a boon and a blessing to men,
The peaceful, the pure, the victorious pen!

Who dreads to the dust returning?
Who shrinks from the sable shore,
Where the high and haughty yearning
Of the soul can sting no more?

I shall ever remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance.

Claire Clairmont
Claire Clairmont
Give me, give me God's own country! there to live and there to die,

Thomas Bracken
Thomas Bracken
In the gloaming, Oh my darling!
When the lights are dim and low,
And the quiet shadows falling
Softly come and softly go.