George Meredith - Modern Love (1891)

11 Sourced Quotes

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How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
When others pick it up, becomes a gem!

George Meredith
And if I drink oblivion of a day,
So shorten I the stature of my soul.

George Meredith
More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar
Utterly this fair garden we might win.

George Meredith
Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.

George Meredith
A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave of a great flood that whirls me to the sea. But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly, and eat our pot of honey on the grave.

George Meredith
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life! -
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!

George Meredith
In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.

George Meredith
What are we first? First, animals; and next
Intelligences at a leap; on whom
Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb,
And all that draweth on the tomb for text.
Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun:
Beneath whose light the shadow loses form.
We are the lords of life, and life is warm.
Intelligence and instinct now are one.
But nature says: 'My children most they seem
When they least know me: therefore I decree
That they shall suffer.' Swift doth young Love flee,
And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.
Then if we study Nature we are wise.

George Meredith
Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
And the great price we pay for it full worth:
We have it only when we are half earth.

George Meredith
The actors are, it seems, the usual three:
Husband and wife and lover.

George Meredith
Prepare, You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: Not like hard life, of laws.

George Meredith