Poetess Quotes

“I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.”

“Eve is a twofold mystery.”

“If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.”

“Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned By those who have not lived past it.”

“With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells In this world!”

“Art is much, but love is more.”

“But I love you, sir:And when a woman says she loves a man,The man must hear her, though he love her not.”

“A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.”

“And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? - I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, - Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.”

“But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!”

“The exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the most princely thing!”

“O rose, who dares to name thee?No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet,But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.”

“Unless you can feel when the song is doneNo other is sweet in its rhythm;Unless you can feel when left by oneThat all men else go with him.”

“There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.”

“I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.”

“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.”

“Definition of Love: A score of zero in tennis. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life.”

“Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”

“Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.”

“When we first met and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble. . . .”

“I would confide to you perhaps my secret profession of faith - which is ... which is ... that let us say and do what we please and can ... there is a natural inferiority of mind in women - of the intellect ... not by any means, of the moral nature - and that the history of Art and of genius testifies to this fact openly.”

“In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.”

“What frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.”

“I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude.”

“Men of science, osteologists And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect For nature,-count nought common or unclean, Spend raptures upon perfect specimens Of indurated veins, distorted joints, Or beautiful new cases of curved spine; While we, we are shocked at nature's falling off, We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains.”