Quotes from Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things.

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, andThis Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,Is immortal diamond.

And I have asked to beWhere no storms come,Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,And out of the swing of the sea.

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.What hours, O what black hours we have spentThis night.

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.

And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

What I do is me, for that I came.

NOT, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

For Christ plays in ten thousand places,/ Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/ To the Father through the features of men's faces.

ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring- When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. (From "Spring")

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

The Best ideal is the true and other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to the holy Three in One.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

What are works of art for? to educate, to be standards. To produce is of little use unless what we produce is known, is widely known, the wider known the better, for it is by being known that it works, it influences, it does its duty, it does good. We must try, then, to be known, aim at it, take means to it. And this without puffing in the process or pride in the success.

The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree. (from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire')

And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.