English Poet Quotes

Lord Byron

Geoffrey Chaucer

Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Milton

William Wordsworth

John Keats

Bede

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way

Isaac Rosenberg

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.

Architecture, can want no commendation, where there are Noble Men, or Noble minds...

The first slap-jack given me for dinner was a cake of flour, partially fried in a pan of fat bacon. I nibbled about the brown edges and threw it, unbaked, against a barn door, where it stuck for days.

Nor too much wealth nor wit come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.

Love, a child, is ever crying:
Please him and he straight is flying,
Give him, he the more is craving,
Never satisfied with having.

Lady Mary Wroth

Tell me the old, old story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and his glory,
Of Jesus and his love.

Katherine Hankey

This life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.

My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots
About their heads are flying!

William Pitt (ship-builder)

Dear Lord! while we adoring pay
Our humble thanks to Thee,
May every heart with rapture say,—
"The Saviour died for me!"

Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine —
Thy wounded hand! — until its tremblings take
Strength from Thy touch.

The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear, And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.

Christina Rossetti

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.

Richard Aldington

Bright clasp of her whole hand around my finger My daughter as we walk together now. All my life I'll feel a ring invisibly Circle this bone with shining When she is grown.

Stephen Spender

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

William Shenstone

Maybe we all want to burn off across the horizon, into space, perhaps, to take off into some unknown territory and meet ourselves out there.

First, a poem must be magical, then musical as a sea-gull and it must hold fire as well.

Jose Garcia Villa

Ask me no more, where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become, as in their sphere.

It is frequently of much importance, not to the comfort only, but to the recovery of the patient, that he should be enabled to look upon his Physician as his friend.

Thomas Gisborne

And shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.

Dorothy Frances Gurney

With leaden foot time creeps along
While Delia is away.

Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face; the predominant passion and the strongest feature become more conspicuous from the others retiring.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Much that is natural, to the will must yield.
Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.

And an ingenious Spaniard says, that "rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate and fools to pass by without consideration."