Quotes About Reflection

There is an old saying well begun is half done - 'tis a bad one. I would use instead, Not begun at all till half done; so according to that I have not begun my Poem and consequently (a priori) can say nothing about it.

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made Sorrow more Beautiful than Beauty's self.

I sit, and moan, Like one who once had wings.

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs

That men, who might have tower'd in the van Of all the congregated world, to fan And winnow from the coming step of time All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, Have been content to let occasion die, Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.

When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream.

I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along - to what?

I should like the window to open onto the Lake of Geneva--and there I'd sit and read all day like the picture of somebody reading.

Upon the honey'd middle of the night

I was alone for a couple of days while Brown went gadding over the country with his ancient knapsack. Now I like his society as well as any Man's, yet regretted his return—it broke in upon me like a Thunderbolt. I had got in a dream among my Books—really luxuriating in a solitude and silence you alone should have disturb'd.

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: - Ode to Psyche - Excerpt

To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties on us … I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy.

How long is this posthumous life of mine to last?

miserable—We can see horribly clear, in the works of such a Man his whole life, as if we were God's spies.—What

O soft embalmer of the still midnight

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

To be thrown among people who care not for you, with whom you have no sympathies[-] [it] forces the Mind upon its own resources, and leaves it free to make its speculations [on] the differences of human character and to class them with the calmness of a Botanist...

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.

Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Do I believe the total perversion that I am witnessing?

In the five years that he had dedicated to this work, he had produced an average of only six paragraphs monthly. He could not even remember what he had written in some of the tablets, and he realized that several were filled principally with doodling. However, Ignatius thought calmly, Rome was not built in a day.

After all, I do not believe that one must necessarily scrape bottom, as it were, in order to view his society subjectively. Rather than moving vertically downward, one may move horizontally outward toward a point of sufficient detachment where a modicum of creature comforts are not necessarily precluded.