Coventry Patmore Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

The more wild and incredible your desire, the more willing and prompt God is in fulfilling it, if you will have it so.

Coventry Patmore
Every evil is some good spelt backwards, and in it the wise know how to read Wisdom.

Coventry Patmore
Creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.

Coventry Patmore
Those who know God know that it is quite a mistake to suppose that there are only five senses.

Coventry Patmore
All the love and joy that a man has ever received in perception is laid up in him as the sunshine of a hundred years is laid up in the bole of the oak.

Coventry Patmore
A moment's fruition of a true felicity is enough and eternity not too much.

Coventry Patmore
The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise; the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.

Coventry Patmore
The woman is the man's glory, and she naturally delights in the praises which are assurances that she is fulfilling her function; and she gives herself to him who succeeds in convincing her that she, of all others, is best able to discharge it for him. A woman without this kind of "vanity" is a monster.

Coventry Patmore
Books are influential in proportion to their obscurity, provided that the obscurity be that of inexpressible Realities. The Bible is the most obscure book in the world. He must be a great fool who thinks he understands the plainest chapter of it.

Coventry Patmore
The promises of God are samples of what is promised; as a handful of wheat is of the barn.

Coventry Patmore
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,
A man will ne'er quite understand,
The customs, politics, and tongue.

Coventry Patmore
How light the touches are that kiss the music from the chords of life!

Coventry Patmore
Ask abundantly, for the measure of your asking shall be that of your receiving.

Coventry Patmore
What a Lover sees in the Beloved is the projected shadow of his own potential beauty in the eyes of God.

Coventry Patmore
Ah, whither shall a maiden flee, When a bold youth so swift pursues, And siege of tenderest courtesy, With hope perseverant, still renews!

Coventry Patmore
The midge's wing beats to and fro A thousand times ere one can utter O.

Coventry Patmore
If we may credit certain hints contained in the lives of the saints, love raises the spirit above the sphere of reverence and worship into one of laughter and dalliance: a sphere in which the soul says: 'Shall I, a gnat which dances in Thy ray, Dare to be reverent?'

Coventry Patmore
Science is a line, art a superficies, and life or the knowledge of God, a solid.

Coventry Patmore
Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly all our disasters come of a few fools having the "courage of their convictions."

Coventry Patmore
To have nought
Is to have all things without care or thought!

Coventry Patmore
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book.

Coventry Patmore
Then sleep the seasons, full of might; While slowly swells the pod, And rounds the peach, and in the night The mushroom bursts the sod. The winter comes: the frozen rut Is bound with silver bars; the white drift heaps against the hut; and night is pierced with stars.

Coventry Patmore
I drew my bride, beneath the moon,
Across my threshold; happy hour!
But, ah, the walk that afternoon
We saw the water-flags in flower!

Coventry Patmore
Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred - may not even be encumbrances.

Coventry Patmore
The sunshine dreaming upon Salmon's height
Is not so sweet and white
As the most heretofore sin-spotted Soul
That darts to its delight
Straight from the absolution of a faithful fight.

Coventry Patmore
Kind souls, you wonder why, love you,
When you, you wonder why, love none.
We love, Fool, for the good we do,
Not that which unto us is done!

Coventry Patmore
"I saw you take his kiss!" "'Tis true."
"O, modesty!" "'Twas strictly kept:
He thought me asleep; at least, I knew
He thought I thought he thought I slept."

Coventry Patmore
Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing man cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapen'd paradise;
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
Which, spent with due, respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine.

Coventry Patmore
One fool will deny more truth in half an hour than a wise man can prove in seven years.

Coventry Patmore
The moods of love are like the wind,
And none knows whence or why they rise.

Coventry Patmore