Christina Rossetti Quotes

70 Sourced Quotes

Love loves for ever,
And finds a sort of joy in pain,
And gives with nought to take again,
And loves too well to end in vain:
Is the gain small then?
Love laughs at "never",
Outlives our life, exceeds the span
Appointed to mere mortal man:
All which love is and does and can
Is all in all then.

Christina Rossetti
Why one day in the country Is worth a month in town; Is worth a day and a year Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion That days drone elsewhere.

Christina Rossetti
The lilies say: Behold how we
Preach without words of purity.

Christina Rossetti
The city mouse lives in a house, The garden mouse lives in a bower

Christina Rossetti
What is green? The grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? Clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange!

Christina Rossetti
The rose saith in the dewy morn,
I am most fair;
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn.

Christina Rossetti
I have a room whereinto no one enters
Save I myself alone:
There sits a blessed memory on a throne,
There my life centres.

Christina Rossetti
This downhill path is easy, but there's no turning back.

Christina Rossetti
God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.

Christina Rossetti
Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,
Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.

Christina Rossetti
Oh that it were with me
As with the flower;
Blooming on its own tree
For butterfly and bee
Its summer morns:
That I might bloom mine hour
A rose in spite of thorns.

Oh that my work were done
As birds' that soar
Rejoicing in the sun:
That when my time is run
And daylight too,
I so might rest once more
Cool with refreshing dew.

Christina Rossetti
I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing robin, sing:
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

Christina Rossetti
This life is but the passage of a day,
This life is but a pang and all is over;
But in the life to come which fades not away
Every love shall abide and every lover.

Christina Rossetti
In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.

Christina Rossetti
The Bourne Underneath the growing grass, Underneath the living flowers, Deeper than the sound of showers: There we shall not count the hours By the shadows as they pass. Youth and health will be but vain, Beauty reckoned of no worth: There a very little girth Can hold round what once the earth Seemed too narrow to contain.

Christina Rossetti
Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.

Christina Rossetti
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun.

Christina Rossetti
Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground.
It may be, could we look with seeing eyes,
This spot we stand on is a Paradise,
Where dead have come to life and lost been found,
Where Faith has triumphed, Martyrdom been crowned,
Where fools have foiled the wisdom of the wise.

Christina Rossetti
Our Indian Crown is in great measure the trapping of a splendid misery.

Christina Rossetti
Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily.

Christina Rossetti
O passing angel, speed me with a song, a melody of heaven to reach my heart and rouse me to the race and make me strong.

Christina Rossetti
Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love Divine; Love was born at Christmas; Star and angels gave the sign.

Christina Rossetti
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart; My silent heart, lie still and break: Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed For a dream's sake.

Christina Rossetti
The birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Christina Rossetti
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

Christina Rossetti
For one man is my world of all the men this wide world holds; O love, my world is you.

Christina Rossetti
I believe because I am told to believe... My faith is faith; it is not evolved out of argumentation, nor does it seek the aid of that.

Christina Rossetti
To her whose heart is my heart's quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome.

Christina Rossetti
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Christina Rossetti
Born in a stable,
Cradled in a manger,
In the world His hands have made,
Born a stranger.

Christina Rossetti