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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign, after William Wordsworth, and is one of the most popular English poets.
 * See also:
 * Locksley Hall (1835; 1842)
 * The Two Voices (1832; 1842)
 * The Princess (1847)
 * In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)
 * Idylls of the King (1856–1885)

Quotes

 * Like ballad burthen music kept, / As on the Lariano crept / To that fair port, below the castle / Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept; / Or hardly slept, but watched awake / A cypress in the moonlight shake, / The moonlight touching o’er a terrace / One tall agave above the lake.
 * Alfred Tennyson, while contemplating the illuminated Castle of Vezio from the terrace of the Hotel Royal Victoria in Varenna (1830)

The breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall''': But the solemn oak-tree sigheth, Thick-leaved, ambrosial, With an ancient melody Of an inward agony, Where Claribel low-lieth.
 * '''Where Claribel low-lieth
 * "Claribel" (1830)

Were thickly crusted, one and all; The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the pear to the gable wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. '''She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!' '''
 * With blackest moss the flower plots
 * "Mariana" (1830)

Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect and power and will, hath heard Time flowing in the middle of the night, And all things creeping to a day of doom.
 * He often lying broad awake, and yet
 * "The Mystic" (1830)

My own sweet Alice, we must die. There's somewhat in this world amiss Shall be unriddled by and by.''' There's somewhat flows to us in life, But more is taken quite away. Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife, That we may die the self-same day.
 * '''Yet fill my glass: give me one kiss:
 * "The Miller's Daughter" (1832)

I least should breathe a thought of pain. Would God renew me from my birth I'd almost live my life again. So sweet it seems with thee to walk, And once again to woo thee mine — It seems in after-dinner talk Across the walnuts and the wine —
 * Have I not found a happy earth?
 * "The Miller's Daughter" (1832)

Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.''' For now the noonday quiet holds the hill: The grasshopper is silent in the grass: The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops: the golden bee Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life.
 * mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,
 * "Oenone", st. 3 (1832)

These three alone lead life to sovereign power.''' Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, '''Acting the law we live by without fear; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.'''
 * '''Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
 * "Oenone", st. 14

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well." '''
 * '''I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
 * "The Palace of Art", st. 1 (1832)

Tomorrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year; Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day, For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.
 * You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
 * "The May Queen", st. 1 (1832)

Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still.
 * Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
 * "A Dream of Fair Women", st. 2 (1832)

Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there; A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.'''
 * '''At length I saw a lady within call,
 * "A Dream of Fair Women" (1832), st. 22

She stood, a sight to make an old man young.'''
 * '''Half light, half shade,
 * "The Gardener's Daughter", l. 139-140 (1842)

What sequel?''' Streaming eyes and breaking hearts? Or all the same as if he had not been? Not so. Shall Error in the round of time Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by year alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself! If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all, Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end. '''But am I not the nobler thro' thy love? O three times less unworthy! likewise thou Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.'''
 * '''Of love that never found his earthly close,
 * "Love and Duty", l. 1- 21 (1842)

The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil, brought the night In which we sat together and alone, And to the want, that hollow'd all the heart, Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye, That burn'd upon its object thro' such tears As flow but once a life. '''The trance gave way To those caresses, when a hundred times In that last kiss, which never was the last, Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.'''
 * The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good,
 * "Love and Duty" l. 57 - 67 (1842).

Our being, lest we rust in ease.''' We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul.
 * '''Meet is it changes should control
 * "Love Thou Thy Land", st. 11 (1842)

Be each man's rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Thro' all the circle of the golden year?
 * But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good
 * "The Golden Year", st. 3 (1842)

My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.'''
 * '''My good blade carves the casques of men,
 * "Sir Galahad", st. 1 (1842)

Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men''', Who hold their hands to all, and cry For that which all deny them — Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry, And all the world go by them.
 * '''I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,
 * "Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue", st. 6 (1842)

She in her poor attire was seen; One praised her ankles, one her eyes, One her dark hair and lovesome mien. So sweet a face, such angel grace, In all that land had never been. Cophetua sware a royal oath: "This beggar maid shall be my queen!"
 * As shines the moon in clouded skies,
 * "The Beggar Maid", st. 2 (1842)

Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again.
 * All the windy ways of men
 * "The Vision of Sin", sec. 4 (1842)

Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time." Another said: "The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame." And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power; A little grain of conscience made him sour." At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" To which an answer peal'd from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.
 * Then some one spake: "Behold! it was a crime
 * "The Vision of Sin", sec. 5 (1842)

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.'''
 * '''Break, break, break,
 * "Break, Break, Break" (1842), st. 1

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
 * Break, break, break
 * "Break, Break, Break" (1842), st. 4

And the sound of a voice that is still!
 * But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
 * "Break, Break, Break" (1842)

To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest: Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.
 * Come not, when I am dead,
 * "Come not, when I am dead" (1850)

Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands'''. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.
 * '''He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
 * "The Eagle" (1851)

Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise; But though we love kind Peace so well, We dare not even by silence sanction lies. It might be safe our censures to withdraw, And yet, my Lords, not well; there is a higher law.
 * We love not this French God, the child of hell,
 * "The Third of February, 1852", st. 2 (1852)

I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.
 * I come from haunts of coot and hern,
 * "The Brook", st. 1 (1855)

To join the brimming river, For '''men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.'''
 * And draw them all along, and flow
 * "The Brook", st. 5

The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, '''Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.''' Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
 * The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
 * "Tithonus", st. 1 (1860)

Yet let your sleep for this one night be sound: I do forgive him!
 * His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to come.
 * "Sea Dreams" (1864) l. 301-303

That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies, That '''a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.'''
 * And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise,
 * "The Grandmother", st. 8 (1864)

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.'''
 * '''Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet —
 * "The Higher Pantheism", st. 6 (1869)

I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, '''Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.'''
 * Flower in the crannied wall,
 * "Flower in the Crannied Wall" (1869)

 * Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
 * The Lover's Tale (1879), line 466

 * Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.
 * The Lover's Tale (1879), line 813

And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath In that close kiss and drank her whisper'd tales. They said that Love would die when Hope was gone. And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope; At last she sought out Memory, and they trod The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope, And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
 * Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
 * The Lover's Tale (1879), line 815

All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.
 * Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
 * "To Virgil", st. 3 (1882)

That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there But never yet hath dipt into the abysm'''
 * '''For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake
 * From The Ancient Sage (1885), lines 37-39

Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!'''
 * '''For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
 * From The Ancient Sage (1885), lines 66-69

She feels the Sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro’ the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail’d ‘Mirage’!
 * She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,
 * From The Ancient Sage (1885), lines 72-77

 * The shell must break before the bird can fly.
 * From The Ancient Sage (1885), line 154

Then drink to England, every guest; That man's the best Cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.
 * First pledge our Queen this solemn night,
 * "Hands All Round", l. 1-4 (1885)

Brothers, must we part at last? Shall we not through good and ill Cleave to one another still? Britain's myriad voices call, 'Sons, be welded each and all, Into one imperial whole, One with Britain, heart and soul! One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne!' Britons, hold your own!
 * Sharers of our glorious past,
 * "Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen" (1886), ll. 31–40, quoted in C. C. Eldridge, The Imperial Experience: From Carlyle to Forster (1996), p. 81

You from the haven Under the sea-cliff, You that are watching The gray Magician With eyes of wonder, I am Merlin, And I am dying, ' I'' am Merlin Who follow The Gleam.'''
 * O young Mariner,
 * "Merlin and the Gleam", st. 1 (1889)

A barbarous people, Blind to the magic, And deaf to the melody, Snarl’d at and cursed me. A demon vext me, The light retreated, The landskip darken’d, The melody deaden’d, The Master whisper’d  ‘Follow The Gleam.’
 * Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it,
 * "Merlin and the Gleam", st. 3 (1889)

 * Well, Gosse, would you like to know what I think of Churton Collins? I think he's a Louse on the Locks of Literature.
 * Evan Charteris, Life and Letters of Sir Edmund Gosse (1931), p. 197

Of him that utter'd nothing base.
 * This laurel greener from the brows
 * To the Queen, st. 3 (1851)

Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet.
 * And statesmen at her council met
 * To the Queen, st. 8 (1851)

And compass'd by the inviolate sea.
 * Broad-based upon her people’s will,
 * To the Queen, st. 9 (1851)

Of good Haroun Alraschid.
 * For it was in the golden prime
 * Recollections of the Arabian Nights, stanza 1, from Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)

And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.
 * A man had given all other bliss,
 * Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

The happy winds upon her played, Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
 * As she fled fast through sun and shade
 * Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

He lends us; but '''when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone.'''
 * God gives us love. Something to love
 * To J. S., stanza 4, from Poems (1832)

Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul, While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll.
 * Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace!
 * To J. S., stanza 18, from Poems (1832)

Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet; Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
 * Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet!
 * To J. S., stanza 19, from Poems (1832)

 * More black than ash-buds in the front of March.
 * The Gardener's Daughter, line 28, from Poems (1842)

And in the morning of the times.
 * We are ancients of the earth,
 * The Daydream: L'Envoi, lines 231-32, from The Complete Works of Alfred Tennyson (1879)

Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry.
 * For now the poet can not die,
 * To ———, after reading a Life and Letters, stanza 4, from Poems (1850)

That codeless myriad of precedent, That wilderness of single instances.
 * Mastering the lawless science of our law,—
 * Aylmer's Field (1864); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * Insipid as the queen upon a card.
 * Aylmer's Field (1864); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine!
 * O Love! what hours were thine and mine,
 * The Daisy, Stanza 1; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Whose crying is a cry for gold.
 * So dear a life your arms enfold,
 * The Daisy, Stanza 24; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed.
 * Read my little fable:
 * The Flower; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

"I'll never love any but you," the nightingale's hymn in the dark.
 * "I'll never love any but you," the morning song of the lark;
 * The First Quarrel, stanza VI., lines 3-4; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Save that I think this gross hard-seeming world Is our misshaping vision of the Powers Behind the world, that make our griefs our gains.
 * My God, I would not live
 * The Sisters, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Is morning-star to the full round of truth.
 * The golden guess
 * Columbus, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

And to conciliate, as their names who dare For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth Nobly to do, nobly to die.
 * No sound is breathed so potent to coerce
 * Tiresias, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a prince's hall.
 * The Wreck, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

My friends and brother souls, With all the peoples, great and small, That wheel between the poles.
 * Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all
 * Epilogue to The Charge of the heavy Brigade, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Is in itself a deed.
 * The song that nerves a nation's heart
 * Epilogue to The Charge of the Heavy Brigade, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

And joys to me, Despite of every Faith and Creed, remains The Mystery.
 * What use to brood? This life of mingled pains
 * To Mary Boyle, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

In some fifth act what this wild Drama means.
 * Be patient. Our Playwright may show
 * The Play, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

What's up is faith, what's down is heresy.
 * In our windy world
 * Harold, Act i, Scene 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

And touches him who made it.
 * A breath that fleets beyond this iron world
 * Harold, Act iii, Scene 2

 * Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.
 * Becket, Prologue, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad.
 * Ambition
 * The Cup, Act i, Scene 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

The southern stars a music pealed.
 * The night with sudden odour reeled;
 * The Rosebud, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Is "Onward," no discordance in the roll And march of that Eternal Harmony Whereto the world beats time.
 * Death's truer name
 * The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale

And none can write it for him upon earth.
 * ...none can truly write his single day,
 * Unpublished Sonnet (originally written as a preface to Becket), in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, by Hallam T. Tennyson (1897)

 * A good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving to the right and to the good under all change: lovely in youthful comeliness, lovely all her life long in comeliness of heart.
 * Letter to Emily Sellwood, quoted in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, by Hallam T. Tennyson (1897)

Ode to Memory (1830)

 * "Written very early in life" — first published in 1830

From the fountains of the past, To glorify the present; oh, haste, Visit my low desire! Strengthen me, enlighten me!''' I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory.
 * '''Thou who stealest fire,

Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope.''' The eddying of her garments caught from thee The light of thy great presence; and the cope Of the half-attain'd futurity, Though deep not fathomless, Was cloven with the million stars which tremble O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy.
 * '''In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest

Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes!''' Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines Unto mine inner eye, Divinest Memory!
 * '''Come forth I charge thee, arise,

From brawling storms, From weary wind, '''With youthful fancy reinspired, We may hold converse with all forms Of the many-sided mind, And those whom passion hath not blinded, Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded.'''
 * Whither in after life retired

Nothing Will Die (1830)

 * From Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)

Under my eye? When will the wind be aweary of blowing Over the sky? When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting? When will the heart be aweary of beating? And nature die? Never, oh! never, nothing will die; '''The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.'''
 * When will the stream be aweary of flowing

All things will change Thro’ eternity. ‘Tis the world’s winter; Autumn and summer Are gone long ago; Earth is dry to the centre, But spring, a new comer, '''A spring rich and strange, Shall make the winds blow Round and round, Thro’ and thro’, Here and there, Till the air And the ground Shall be fill’d with life anew.'''
 * Nothing will die;

It will change, but it will not fade. So let the wind range; For even and morn Ever will be Thro’ eternity. Nothing was born; Nothing will die; All things will change.'''
 * '''The world was never made;

The Poet (1830)

With golden stars above; Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.''' He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill, He saw thro' his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded The secretest walks of fame: The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed And wing'd with flame, Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue...
 * '''The poet in a golden clime was born,

Tho' one did fling the fire; Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams Of high desire.'''
 * '''So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,

Like one great garden show'd, And thro' the wreaths of floating dark up-curl'd, Rare sunrise flow'd '''And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise Her beautiful bold brow, When rites and forms before his burning eyes Melted like snow.'''
 * Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world

Sunn'd by those orient skies; But round about the circles of the globes Of her keen '''And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame WISDOM, a name to shake All evil dreams of power — a sacred name.''' And when she spake, Her words did gather thunder as they ran, And as the lightning to the thunder Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, Making earth wonder, '''So was their meaning to her words. No sword Of wrath her right arm whirl'd, But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world.'''
 * There was no blood upon her maiden robes

Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)
Of me you shall not win renown: You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired; The daughter of a hundred earls, You are not one to be desired.
 * Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
 * Stanza 1

Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.'''
 * '''A simple maiden in her flower
 * Stanza 2

And my disdain is my reply. The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I.
 * You sought to prove how I could love,
 * Stanza 3

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
 * Her manners had not that repose
 * Stanza 5

The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent.
 * From yon blue heaven above us bent,
 * Stanza 7

From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, ''' 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.'''
 * Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
 * Stanza 7

The Lotos-Eaters (1832)
In which it seemed always afternoon.
 * In the afternoon they came unto a land
 * St. 1

Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes.
 * There is sweet music here that softer falls
 * Choric Song, st. 1

 * There is no joy but calm!
 * Choric Song, st. 2

Should life all labour be?''' Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. '''What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.''' Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
 * '''Death is the end of life; ah, why
 * Choric Song, st. 4

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
 * Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
 * Choric Song, st. 8

Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
 * Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
 * Choric Song, st. 8

The Lady of Shalott (1832)

 * [[s:Poems (Tennyson, 1843)/Volume 1/The Lady of Shalott|Full text online at Wikisource]

Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And through the field the road runs by To many-towered Camelot.
 * On either side the river lie
 * Pt. I, st. 1

Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot.
 * Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
 * Pt. I, st. 2

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott.
 * Pt. II, st. 3 - 4

Thick-jewelled shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burned like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot.
 * All in the blue unclouded weather
 * Pt. III, st. 3

He flashed into the crystal mirror, "Tirra lirra," by the river Sang Sir Lancelot.
 * From the bank and from the river
 * Pt. III, st. 4

She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She looked down to Camelot.''' Out flew the web and floated wide; '''The mirror cracked from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.'''
 * '''She left the web, she left the loom,
 * Pt. III, st. 5

That loosely flew to left and right — The leaves upon her falling light — Thro' the noises of the night, She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. '''Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.''' For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott.
 * Lying, robed in snowy white

Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame, And around the prow they read her name, The Lady of Shalott. Who is this? And what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the Knights at Camelot; But Lancelot mused a little space He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott."
 * Out upon the wharfs they came,
 * Pt. IV, st. 6

Ulysses (1842)

By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.'''
 * '''It little profits that an idle king,
 * l. 1-5

Life to the lees''': all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: '''I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all'''; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
 * '''I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
 * 13 -17

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.'''
 * '''I am part of all that I have met;
 * l. 18 - 21

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breath were life.''' Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire '''To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.'''
 * '''How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
 * l. 22-32

That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old; '''Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.'''
 * Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
 * l. 46-53

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. '''Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.'''
 * The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
 * l. 54-62

It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. ''' Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are — One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'''
 * It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
 * l. 63-70

The Day-Dream (1842)

That strove in other days to pass, Are wither'd in the thorny close, Or scatter'd blanching on the grass. He gazes on the silent dead: "They perish'd in their daring deeds." This proverb flashes thro' his head, "The many fail: the one succeeds."
 * The bodies and the bones of those
 * The Arrival, st. 2

And round her waist she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went In that new world which is the old: '''Across the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy princess follow'd him.'''
 * And on her lover's arm she leant,
 * The Departure, st. 1

O happy sleep, that lightly fled! O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep! O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!
 * O eyes long laid in happy sleep!
 * The Departure, st. 3

Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Thro' all the world she follow'd him.'''
 * '''And o'er the hills, and far away
 * The Departure, st. 4

And if you find no moral there, Go, look in any glass and say, What moral is in being fair. '''Oh, to what uses shall we put The wildweed-flower that simply blows? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose?'''
 * So, Lady Flora, take my lay,
 * Moral, st. 1

Morte D'Arthur (1842)
Laid widow’d of the power in his eye That bow’d the will.
 * Authority forgets a dying king,
 * Lines 121-123

Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon''', And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur.
 * '''The great brand
 * Lines 136-142

Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight
 * My end draws nigh; 't is time that I were gone.
 * Lines 163-164

And every chance brought out a noble knight.
 * When every morning brought a noble chance,
 * Lines 230-231

Lady Clare (1842)

 * Full text online

And clouds are highest up in air. Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare.
 * It was the time when lilies blow,

Nor for my lands so broad and fair; He loves me for my own true worth, And that is well," said Lady Clare.
 * "He does not love me for my birth

"I will speak out, for I dare not lie, Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold, And fling the diamond necklace by." "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "But keep the secret all you can." She said, "Not so; but I will know If there be any faith in man".
 * "If I'm a beggar born," she said

She was no longer Lady Clare: She went by dale, and she went by down, With a single rose in her hair. The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Leapt up from where she lay. Dropped her head in the maiden's hand. And followed her all the way.
 * She clad herself in a russet gown,

I am but as my fortunes are: I am a beggar born," she said, "And not the Lady Clare".
 * "If I come dressed like a village maid,

And I," said he, "the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare".
 * "If you are not the heiress born,

Tears, Idle Tears (1850)

Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.'''
 * '''Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
 * St. 1

That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
 * Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
 * St. 2

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
 * Dear as remembered kisses after death,
 * St. 4

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852)

With an empire's lamentation'''; Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation; Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
 * Bury the Great Duke
 * St. I

As fits an universal woe, Let the long, long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.
 * Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
 * St. III

And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime.''' O good gray head which all men knew, O voice from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fallen at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!
 * '''Rich in saving common-sense,
 * St. IV

Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.
 * That tower of strength
 * St. IV

He that gained a hundred fights, And never lost an English gun.
 * For this is England's greatest son,
 * St. VI

Him who cares not to be great But as he saves or serves the state. Not once or twice in our rough island-story The path of duty was the way to glory.''' He that walks it, only thirsting For the right, and learns to deaden Love of self, before his journey closes, He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting Into glossy purples, which outredden All voluptuous garden-roses.
 * '''Yea, let all good things await
 * St. VIII

Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him!
 * Speak no more of his renown,
 * St. IX

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)

 * Based upon the military confrontation known as The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava of the Crimean War

Half a league onward All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred:''' 'Forward the Light Brigade Charge for the guns' he said Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
 * '''Half a league half a league
 * St. 1

Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: '''Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of death Rode the six hundred.'''
 * "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
 * St. 2

Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred.'''
 * '''Cannon to right of them,
 * St. 3

While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of Death Back from the mouth of Hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred.
 * Storm'd at with shot and shell,
 * St. 5

Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen) Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more.
 * Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
 * Part I, section ii

That oiled and curled Assyrian Bull.
 * That jewelled mass of millinery,
 * Part I, section vi, stanza 6

 * One still strong man in a blatant land.
 * Part I, section x, stanza 5

That the man I am may cease to be!
 * And ah for a man to arise in me,
 * Part I, section x, stanza 6

I long'd so heartily then and there To give him the grasp of fellowship; But while I past he was humming an air, Stopt, and then with a riding whip, Leisurely tapping a glossy boot, And curving a contumelious lip, Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare.
 * Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
 * Part I, section xiii, stanza 2

For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown.
 * Come into the garden, Maud,
 * Part I, section xxii, stanza 1

And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die.
 * For a breeze of morning moves,
 * Part I, section xxii, stanza 2

The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon.
 * All night have the roses heard
 * Part I, section xxii, stanza 3

Come hither, the dances are done, In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls, Queen lily and rose in one; Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls, To the flowers, and be their sun.
 * Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
 * Part I, section xxii, stanza 9

From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;" And the white rose weeps, "She is late;" The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;" And the lily whispers, "I wait."
 * There has fallen a splendid tear
 * Part I, section xxii, stanza 10

Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.
 * She is coming, my own, my sweet;
 * Part I, section xxii, stanza 11

Not thou, but like to thee: Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.
 * A shadow flits before me,
 * Part II, section iv, stanza 3

Queen Mary: A Drama (published 1876)
May love a puppy cur for no more reason Than that the twain have been tied up together.
 * A mastiff dog
 * Act i, scene 4

Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore No perfect witness of a perfect faith In him who persecutes.
 * To persecute
 * Act iii, scene 4

To strike too soon is oft to miss the blow.
 * In statesmanship
 * Act iii, scene 6

Woman is various and most mutable.
 * My lord, you know what Virgil sings—
 * Act iii, scene 6

A kindness from him, for his heart was rich— Of such fine mould that if you sowed therein The seed of Hate, it blossomed Charity.
 * To do him any wrong was to beget
 * Act iv, scene 1

By Him that was the Truth, 'How hard it is For the rich man to enter into heaven!' Let all rich men remember that hard word.
 * Remember that sore saying spoken once
 * Act iv, scene 3

 * Come out, my lord, it is a world of fools.
 * Act iv, scene 3

 * Unalterably and pesteringly fond.
 * Act v, scene 1

The Revenge (1878)
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!" Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"
 * At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
 * St. 1

You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."
 * Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;
 * St. 2

Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to die! There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set." And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men. Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."
 * "Shall we fight or shall we fly?
 * St. 4

The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.
 * Sir Richard spoke and he laughed, and we roared a hurrah, and so
 * St. 5

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)
She with all the breadth of man.
 * She with all the charm of woman,
 * Line 48

Christian love among the Churches looked the twin of heathen hate.
 * Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
 * Line 85

 * Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat.
 * Line 112

Teach your flattered kings that only those who can not read can rule.
 * You that woo the Voices—tell them "Old Experience is a fool";
 * Line 131

Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of art.
 * Authors—essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
 * Line 139

Warless? War will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon? Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?
 * Who can fancy warless men?
 * Line 172

 * Yet the moonlight is the sunlight and the sun himself will pass.
 * Line 182

 * Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
 * Line 197

Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword "Evolution" here.
 * Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every peopled sphere?
 * Line 198

And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
 * Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good
 * Line 200

Forward, till you see the Highest Human Nature is divine.
 * Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.
 * Line 275

 * Love will conquer at the last.
 * Line 280

Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.
 * Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
 * Stanza 21

 * Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!
 * Stanza 38

Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.
 * Here and there a cotter's babe is royal—born by right divine;
 * Stanza 63

 * Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.
 * Stanza 124

Crossing the Bar (1889)

And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.
 * Sunset and evening star,
 * St. 1

And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.
 * Sunset and evening star,
 * St. 2

And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark.
 * Twilight and evening bell,
 * St. 3

The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.
 * For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
 * St. 4

The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)
Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away, To sleep! to sleep! Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past: Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.
 * Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day:
 * Song, Act I, Scene ii

I am only merry for an hour or two Upon a birthday: if this life of ours Be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry Because a year of it is gone? but Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come Whispering 'It will be happier;' and old faces Press round us, and warm hands close with warm hands, And thro' the blood the wine leaps to the brain Like April sap to the topmost tree, that shoots New buds to heaven, whereon the throstle rock'd Sings a new song to the new year — and you, Strike up a song, my friends, and then to bed.
 * Friends,
 * Act I, Scene III

Never— Till Nature, high and low, and great and small Forgets herself, and all her loves and hates Sink again into Chaos.
 * Forget thee…
 * Act I, Scene III

His following but can keep his followers true. I am one with mine. Traitors are rarely bred Save under traitor kings.
 * Robin: No man who truly loves and truly rules
 * Act II, Scene i

Misattributed

 * The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
 * Quoted in A Dictionary of Quotations, in Most Frequent Use by D.E. Macdonnel (1809) translated from French: Le bonheur de l'homme en cette vi ne consiste pas á être sans passions: il consiste à en être le maître.

 * Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die
 * Misquote of the lines "Theirs not to reason why, / theirs but to do and die" from The Charge of the Light Brigade

Quotes about Tennyson
But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music, as before."
 * [A]nswers to questions about ethical meaning cannot come from science. Tennyson... knew that the "good life"... required their successful integration. Tennyson called these two sources knowledge and reverence, personified as mind and soul. And he spoke of their union... "Let knowledge grow from more to more
 * Stephen Jay Gould, "The Tooth and Claw Centennial," Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995)

 * Tennyson knew his magician's business.
 * Aldous Huxley in "Magic", Texts and Pretexts (1930)

I hope he's not like Tennyson. I'd rather have him play a fiddle Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.
 * Should Heaven send me any son,
 * Dorothy Parker, "A Pig's-Eye View of Literature" from Sunset Gun (1927); reproduced in Not So Deep as a Well: Collected Poems (1937), p. 110.

 * The news came to the village — the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation — that Byron was dead. Tennyson was then about a boy of fifteen. "Byron was dead! I thought the whole world was at an end," he once said, speaking of those bygone days. "I thought everything was over and finished for everyone — that nothing else mattered. I remembered I walked out alone, and carved 'Byron is dead' into the sandstone."
 * Anne Isabella Thackeray, Lady Ritchie, Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Robert and Elizabeth Browning (1892)

title: Alfred, Lord Tennyson


text:
Emily Brontë

Emily Jane Brontë (30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848), one of the Brontë sisters, was an English novelist and poet, sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë. She is most famous for her only novel, Wuthering Heights. She wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell.

I Am the Only Being (1836)

 * Full text at Wikisource

 * I am the only being whose doom No tongue would ask no eye would mourn I never caused a thought of gloom A smile of joy since I was born In secret pleasure — secret tears This changeful life has slipped away As friendless after eighteen years As lone as on my natal day

 * First melted off the hope of youth Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew And then experience told me truth In mortal bosoms never grew  'Twas grief enough to think mankind All hollow servile insincere But worse to trust to my own mind And find the same corruption there

Spellbound (November 1837)

 * The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow, And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go.  Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing drear can move me— I will not, cannot go.

Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee (May 1841)

 * Full text at Wikisource

 * Shall Earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer now? Since passion may not fire thee Shall Nature cease to bow? Thy mind is ever moving In regions dark to thee; Recall its useless roving — Come back and dwell with me —

 * I've watched thee every hour — I know my mighty sway — I know my magic power To drive thy griefs away —

 * Then let my winds caress thee — Thy comrade let me be — Since naught beside can bless thee Return and dwell with me —

The Prisoner (October 1841)

 * Full text at Wikisource

 * He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars; Winds take a pensive tone and stars a tender fire And visions rise and change which kills me with desire.

 * But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends Mute music sooths my breast — unuttered harmony That I could never dream till earth was lost to me.  Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels — Its wings are almost free, it is home, its harbor found; Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound —   O, dreadful is the check — intense the agony When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see; When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain.  Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; The more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless; And robed in fires of Hell, or bright with heavenly shine If it but herald Death, the vision is divine —

What Use Is It To Slumber Here?

 * What use is it to slumber here: Though the heart be sad and weary? What use is it to slumber here Though the day rise dark and dreary?

 * For that mist may break when the sun is high And this soul forget its sorrow And the rose ray of the closing day May promise a brighter morrow.

Love and Friendship

 * Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly?

A Little While, a Little While (1846)

 * Still, as I mused, the naked room, The alien firelight died away; And from the midst of cheerless gloom I passed to bright, unclouded day.
 * Stanza vi.

 * A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; And, deepening still the dreamlike charm, Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
 * Stanza vii.

To Imagination (1846)

 * When weary with the long day's care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again: Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, While thou canst speak with such a tone!

 * So hopeless is the world without; The world within I doubly prize; Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt, And cold suspicion never rise; Where thou, and I, and Liberty, Have undisputed sovereignty.

 * What matters it, that, all around, Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, If but within our bosom's bound We hold a bright, untroubled sky, Warm with ten thousand mingled rays Of suns that know no winter days?

 * Reason, indeed, may oft complain For Nature's sad reality, And tell the suffering heart, how vain Its cherished dreams must always be; And Truth may rudely trample down The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:

 * But, thou art ever there, to bring The hovering vision back, and breathe New glories o'er the blighted spring, And call a lovelier Life from Death, And whisper, with a voice divine, Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

 * I trust not to thy phantom bliss, Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour, With never-failing thankfulness, I welcome thee, Benignant Power; Sure solacer of human cares, And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!

Remembrance (1846)

 * Full text at Wikisource

 * Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

 * Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, While the world's tide is bearing me along; Other desires and other hopes beset me, Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

 * But when the days of golden dreams had perished, And even Despair was powerless to destroy; Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Faith and Despondency (1846)

 * Full text at Wikisource

 * The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mateless play; And, while the night is gathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away;—

No Coward Soul Is Mine (1846)

 * Despite Charlotte's claim, it is not the last Emily's poem Full text at Wikisource

 * No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life — that in me has rest, As I — undying Life — have power in Thee!  Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main...

 * With wide-embracing love Thy Spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. Though earth and moon were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee.  There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

The Old Stoic (1846)
'Tis all that I implore In life and death a chainless soul With courage to endure
 * Yes, as my swift days near their goal

Wuthering Heights (1847)

 * See Wuthering Heights

Quotes about Brontë

 * The English writers who had a big influence on me during my adolescence were Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf.
 * Isabel Allende Interview

 * Miss Emily était beaucoup moins brillante que sa sœur mais bien plus sympathique.
 * Miss Emily was considerably less brilliant than her sister [Charlotte] but much more sympathetic.
 * Louise de Bassompierre, Emily's fellow student in Brussels, Two Brussels Schoolfellows of Charlotte Brontë Brontë Society Transactions, 5:23 (1913)

 * Emily is not very fond of teaching but she would nevertheless take care of the housekeeping, and though she is rather withdrawn she has too kind a heart not to do her utmost for the well-being of the children — she is also very generous soul...
 * Charlotte Brontë, in a letter to Constantin Heger (24 July 1844)

 * My sister's [Emily's] disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she know them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word.
 * Charlotte Brontë, Editor's Preface to the Second Edition of Wuthering Heights (1850).

 * Why should Wuthering Heights appear so entirely satisfying? Perhaps because it is a symbolic representation of what Emily Brontë felt about the universe. Passionate in its beauty and intensity, as well as its spiritual fervour. Unlike those Victorian values which contemporary society, "respectable" society, held so dear, the people in Emily Brontë's novel, Heathcliff and Cathy, are neither good nor bad. They are wild or tame. They are the storm, or calm.
 * Lord David Cecil, quoted in Patrick Garland, 'David As Lecturer and Critic', in David Cecil: A Portrait by his Friends (1990), p. 119

 * When I was fourteen I used to read literature in English. I read textbooks and the newspapers in Spanish, but when I really started to get into literature was when I started reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights…When I started reading Wuthering Heights, it just put my hair on end. I couldn't put it down. I read it two or three times, one right after the other.
 * Rosario Ferré interview in Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out by Donna Marie Perry (1993)

 * Emily Bronte was a wild, original, and striking creature, but her one book is a kind of prose Kubla Khan, — a nightmare of the superheated imagination.
 * Frederic Harrison, Early Victorian literature (1895), p. 150.

 * She should have been a man – a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty, never have given way but with life. She had a head for logic, and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer indeed in a woman... impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned.
 * Constantin Héger, (Emily's teacher in Brussels in 1842,) in a letter to Mrs. Gaskell, as quoted in The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Vol. III (2011), p. 208.

 * Don't forget books. What would life be without them? Emily Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, William Faulkner. Read the greats-they're great for a reason. They know how to chart the human soul. (p 32)
 * Alice Hoffman Survival Lessons (2013)

 * (Whom do you consider your literary heroes?) Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, Emily Brontë, Ray Bradbury, all for different reasons, all adored...(Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today?) All time — Emily Brontë, author of the greatest psychological novel ever written, with the most complex character ever conceived.
 * Alice Hoffman Interview (2014)

 * The character of Emily Brontë was a peculiar mixture of timidity and Spartan-like courage. She was painfully shy, but physically she was brave to a surprising degree. She loved few persons, but those few with a passion of self-sacrificing tenderness and devotion. To other people's failings she was lenient and forgiving, but over herself she kept a continual and most austere watch, never allowing herself to deviate for one instant from what she considered her duty. She fought with her weakness to the very last, keeping up, and, marvellous to relate, about her accustomed duties in the house; and refusing strenuously to admit that anything ailed her, or to see a doctor. Her inflexibility of purpose was more like that of a strong man than of a delicate, weak woman...
 * Eva Hope, Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era (1886), p. 168

 * What is said of Charlotte may, with almost equal truth, be said of Emily and Anne; though they differed greatly in many points of character and disposition, they were each and all on common ground if a principle had to be maintained or a sham to be detected. They were all jealous of anything hollow or unreal. All were resolutely single-minded, eminently courageous, eminently simple in their habits, and eminently tender-hearted.
 * Ellen Nussey, Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë (1871)

 * Emily Brontë had by this time acquired a lithesome, graceful figure. She was the tallest person in the house, except her father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte's, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz, and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes – kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not often look at you; she was too reserved. Their colour might be said to be dark grey, at other times dark blue, they varied so. She talked very little. She and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.
 * Ellen Nussey, Reminiscences of Charlotte Brontë (1871)

 * So very little is known of Emily Brontë that every little detail awakens an interest. Her extreme reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely lovable; she invited confidence in her moral power. Few people have the gift of looking and smiling as she could look and smile.  One of her rare expressive looks was something to remember through life, there was such a depth of soul and feeling, and yet a shyness of revealing herself—a strength of self-containment seen in no other. She was in the strictest sense a law unto herself, and a heroine in keeping to her law. She and gentle  Anne were to be seen twined together as united statues of power and humility. They were to be seen with their arms lacing each other in their younger days whenever their occupations permitted their Union. On the top of a moor or in a deep glen Emily was a child in spirit for glee and enjoyment; or when thrown entirely on her own resources to do a kindness, she could be vivacious in conversation and enjoy giving pleasure. A spell of mischief also lurked in her on occasions when out on the moors. She enjoyed leading Charlotte where she would not dare to go of her own free-will. Charlotte had a mortal dread of unknown animals, and it was Emily's pleasure to lead her into close vicinity, and then to tell her of how and of what she had done, laughing at her horror with great amusement. If Emily wanted a book she might have left in the sitting-room she would dart in again without looking at any one, especially if any guest were present. Among the curates, Mr. Weightman was her only exception for any conventional courtesy. The ability with which she took up music was amazing; the style, the touch, and the expression was that of a professor absorbed heart and soul in his theme. The two dogs, Keeper and Flossy, were always in quiet waiting by the side of Emily and Anne during their breakfast of Scotch oatmeal and milk, and always had a share handed down to them at the close of the meal. Poor old Keeper, Emily's faithful friend and worshipper, seemed to understand her like a human being.  One evening, when the four friends were sitting closely round the fire in the sitting-room, Keeper forced himself in between Charlotte and Emily and mounted himself on Emily's lap; finding the space too limited for his comfort he pressed himself forward on to the guest's knees, making himself quite comfortable. Emily's heart was won by the unresisting endurance of the visitor, little guessing that she herself, being in close contact, was the inspiring cause of submission to Keeper's preference. Sometimes Emily would delight in showing off Keeper—make him frantic in action, and roar with the voice of a lion.  It was a terrifying exhibition within the walls of an ordinary sitting-room.  Keeper was a solemn mourner at Emily's funeral and never recovered his cheerfulness.
 * Ellen Nussey, quoted in Charlotte Brontë by Rebecca Fraser (1988), p. 296

 *  Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre, because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with eloquence and splendour and passion “I love”, “I hate”, “I suffer”. Her experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there is no “I” in Wuthering Heights. There are no governesses. There are no employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel — a struggle, half thwarted but of superb conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which is not merely “I love” or “I hate”, but “we, the whole human race” and “you, the eternal powers . . . ” the sentence remains unfinished. It is not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, “If all else perished and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem part of it”. It breaks out again in the presence of the dead. “I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter — the eternity they have entered — where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy and joy in its fulness.” It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of comparing Wuthering Heights with a real farm and Heathcliff with a real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has a more vivid existence than his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.
 * Virginia Woolf, in "Jane Eyre" And "Wuthering Heights" in The Common Reader (1916)

title: Emily Brontë


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Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri (c. 30 May 1265 – 13 September 1321), most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.

 * See also: Divine Comedy

La Vita Nuova (1293)

My memory... On the first page That is the chapter when I first met you Appear the words... Here begins a new life.'''
 * In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria, dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica, la quale dice: Incipit vita nova.
 * '''In that book which is
 * Chapter I, opening lines (as reported in The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time by Leslie Pockell.)
 * In that part of the book of my memory before the which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, Incipit Vita Nova. [Footnote: “Here beginneth the new life.”]
 * Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 * Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.
 * Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.
 * Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love.

madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, e d'esto core ardendo lei paventosa umilmente pascea: appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo.'' He woke her then and trembling and obedient She ate that burning heart out of his hand; Weeping I saw him then depart from me.
 * ''ne le braccia avea
 * In his arms, my lady lay asleep, wrapped in a veil.
 * Chapter I, First Sonnet (tr. Mark Musa)

per essemplo di lei bieltà si prova.'' To her perfection all of beauty tends.
 * ''Ella è quanto de ben pò far natura;
 * She is the sum of nature's universe.
 * Chapter XIV, lines 49–50 (tr. Barbara Reynolds)

e così esser l'un sanza l'altro osa com'alma razional sanza ragione.'' one can no more be without the other than the reasoning mind without its reason.
 * ''Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa...
 * Love and the gracious heart are a single thing...
 * Chapter XVI (tr. Mark Musa)

e costumato a la sua segnoria'' And made his lordship so familiar.
 * ''Sì lungiamente m'ha tenuto Amore
 * Love hath so long possessed me for his own
 * Chapter XXIV

Il Convivio (1304–1307)
de la mia donna disiosamente... che lo 'ntelletto sovr'esse disvia.'' Upon my lady's admirable gifts... Beyond the range of human intellect.
 * ''Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
 * Love with delight discourses in my mind
 * Trattato Terzo, line 1.

 * La moralitade è bellezza de la filosofia.
 * Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.
 * Trattato Terzo, Ch. 15.

(1312-1313)

 * Nam in omni actione principaliter intenditur ab agente, sive necessitate naturae, sive voluntarie agat, propriam similitudinem explicare, unde fit, quod omne agens, in quantum huiusmodi, delectatur; quia, quum omne quod est appetat suum esse, ac in agendo agentis esse quodammodo amplietur, sequiturde necessitate delectatio... Nihil igitur agit, nisi tale existens, quale patiens fieri debet...
 * For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, it is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows... Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self.
 * Libri iii, Caput XIII, (XV.) emendati Johann Heinrich F. Karl Witte (1874) p. 25. Translation as quoted by Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958) p. 175.

Epistolae (Letters)

 * Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.
 * When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."
 * Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.

 * Genus vero philosophie, sub quo hic in toto et parte proceditur, est morale negotium, sive ethica; quia non ad speculandum, sed ad opus inventum est totum et pars.
 * Now the kind of philosophy under which we proceed in the whole and in the part is moral philosophy or ethics; because the whole was undertaken not for speculation but for practice.
 * Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 40), as translated by Charles Latham in A Translation of Dante's Eleven Letters (1891), Letter XI, §16, p. 199.

Misattributed

 * The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
 * Henry Powell Spring in 1944; popularized by John F. Kennedy misquoting Dante (24 June 1963). Dante placed those who "non furon ribelli né fur fedeli" [were neither for nor against God] in a special region near the mouth of Hell; the lowest part of Hell, a lake of ice, was for traitors.
 * According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum President Kennedy got his facts wrong. Dante never made this statement. The closest to what President Kennedy meant is in the Inferno where the souls in the ante-room of hell, who "lived without disgrace and without praise," and the coward angels, who did not rebel but did not resist the cohorts of Lucifer, are condemned to continually chase a banner that is forever changing course while being stung by wasps and horseflies.
 * See Canticle I (Inferno), Canto 3, vv 35-42 for the notion of neutrality and where JFK might have paraphrased from.

Quotes about Dante

 * Alphabetized by author

 * And you, beloved children, whose lot it is to promote learning under the magisterium of the Church, continue as you are doing to love and tend the noble poet whom We do not hesitate to call the most eloquent singer of the Christian idea.
 * Pope Benedict XV, In Praeclara Summorum (April 30, 1921).

 * Dante's relationship with women is very complex, because the range of real women in Dante's life and in Dante Alighieri's imagined life is very different. There is an idealization of women that occurs when he is nine years old. He lost his real mother when he was five years old, so he is the son of a father and a stepmother. The neighbors of the Portinari family had six daughters and one of these is Beatrice, a nine-year-old girl, her age. Dante meets her gaze and from that moment he becomes almost a prisoner of that gaze, which is why nine is Beatrice's magic number, because he meets her at nine years old. The Poet follows her to Florence for another nine years, without ever receiving encouragement from her, until at eighteen, before entering the church where the girl goes every evening in Santa Margherita dei Cerchi which is the Portinari church, suddenly he decides to stop, look at him and smile at him and says "I greet you" which is the only phrase Dante will hear from Beatrice. Dante remains completely satisfied by this smile and considers it the sealing of a relationship that has had no other type of concretization, nothing else, just this look and this greeting. He tells this story in this wonderful diary which is the Vita Nova, a set of poems and prose writings that he wrote in the aftermath of Beatrice's death.
 * Pupi Avati. As quoted in Giuliana Poli, Pupi Avati: «Dante, un eterno bambino», Avvenire (February 7, 2024)

 * Christianity has an admirable example of the natural union between faith and freedom in Dante Alighieri. Precisely his undoubted adherence to Catholic truth allows and illuminates his perfect autonomy of judgement, free from any fear or human conditioning. Dante is not afraid to criticize the work of the popes and their operational choices, to the point of placing several of them in the depths of hell. But in him "the reverence of the supreme keys" never diminishes and never diminishes in the slightest (Inf. XIX, 101). When it comes to expressing reservations or criticisms that he considers due, there are no discounts neither for lay people, nor for ecclesiastics, nor for monarchs, nor for ordinary citizens... all of whom are required, without exception, to abide by the law evangelical.
 * Cardinal Giacomo Biffi. As quoted in Antonio Socci, Il (vero) Dante che non sentite da Benigni, Lo Straniero (March 10, 2015)

 * Dante does not come before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante.
 * Thomas Carlyle, "The Hero as Poet" in Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841).

That highte Dant, for he can al devyse Fro point to point, nat o word wol he faille.
 * Redeth the grete poete of Itaille,
 * Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1390), The Monkes Tale, lines 3650–3652.

 * I wanted my illustrations for the Dante to be like the faint markings of moisture in a divine cheese. This explains their variegated aspect of butterflies' wings. Mysticism is cheese; Christ is cheese, better still, mountains of cheese!
 * Salvador Dalí, Diary of a Genius (1965), p. 195.

 * For us Anishinaabe, Biskaabiiyang is a specific term that means “returning to the woods,” because we’re woodland peoples. For example, I grew up growing my “three sisters”—that is, corn, beans, and squash—along the edge of the forest, using what people now call sylvan culture or permaculture. It’s curious how this counters the perspective of classical authors like Dante in early modern Europe or, later, Edmund Spenser, an important Renaissance poet, who view the woods as this terrifying presence. Why is this decolonizing? Because through boarding schools and many other colonial experiences, that fear of the woods creeps in.
 * Grace Dillon "Taking the Fiction Out of Science Fiction: A Conversation about Indigenous Futurisms" (2021)

 * Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.
 * T. S. Eliot, "Dante" (1929).

 * Dante as a poet performs miracles in some of the openings of his lyrics or some of his verses in the Commedia. In an age of convention and formalism he went to Virgil to school; in an age when nothing gave reason to hope for the appearance of a masterpiece of form and structure, he produced such a masterpiece. His creative work is immensely superior in merit to his theorizing, but even these show how, in spite of the limitations of contemporary philosophy and rhetoric he was able to slip through the meshes of the network which encircled him, and to bring the vernacular poetry of Italy, when it was still in its infancy, to heights of perfection and finish that have seldom been equalled and never surpassed.
 * Cesare Foligno (1921, Annual Italian Lecture): (quote on p. 96)

 * I would like to add my voice to those who consider Dante Alighieri an artist of the greatest universal esteem, who through his immortal works still has much to say and offer to those who desire to travel the way to true knowledge, to the authentic discovery of self, of the world, of life's profound and transcendent meaning. ... The Comedy can be read as a great itinerary, rather as a true pilgrimage, both personal and interior, as well as communal, ecclesial, social and historic. ... Dante is...a prophet of hope, a herald of humanity's possible redemption and liberation, of profound change in every man and woman, of all of humanity.
 * Pope Francis, Message to the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture for the solemn celebration of the 750th anniversary of the birth of the supreme poet Dante Alighieri (4 May 2015).

 * Dante was the first to sing of heaven and of hell, not as the dreams of mythological fiction, but as the objects of a real faith. He was the first who lanched from this promontory on which we stand, into the vast immensity of the universe, traversed the abyss amidst demons and infernal tortures, and mounting afterwards through angelic hosts and undiscovered worlds, gazed with stedfast eye upon the glories of the Highest... Dante was the Columbus who discovered this new world of poesy... Dante probably surpassed even Homer himself.
 * Edmund Dorr Griffin, in Remains of the Rev. Edmund D. Griffin (1831), p. 335.

 * Dante's corpus as a whole is in certain respects like a testament to the closing medieval age; it shows what the Western world would have been had it not broken from its tradition.
 * René Guénon, Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929), p. 77

 * If instilling the fear of hell is a form of “child abuse” perhaps Dante’s “Comedy,” with its graphic depictions of hell, should be forbidden to minors in Japan, and Japanese travel agents should not take families with minors to the famous Medieval Cemetery of or to countless European cathedrals whose frescos or paintings show how devils will torment the sinners in the afterlife (Buddhist depictions of  are not less terrifying, by the way).
 * Massimo Introvigne, "Japan, Pamphlets Against Conservative Religion Distributed in Schools", Bitter Winter (March 8, 2024)

 * I love Dante almost as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is ballast.
 * James Joyce, as quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (1959), p. 226.

 * Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create. He has occupied a vast space, and has filled it with the superiority of a sublime mind. He is diverse, strong, and gracious. He has imagination, warmth, and enthusiasm. He makes his reader tremble, shed tears, feel the thrill of honor in a way that is the height of art. Severe and menacing, he has terrible imprecations for crime, scourgings for vice, sorrow for misfortune. As a citizen, affected by the laws of the republic, he thunders against its oppressors, but he is always ready to excuse his native city. Florence is ever to him his sweet, beloved country, dear to his heart. I am envious for my dear France, that she has never produced a rival to Dante; that this Colossus has not had his equal among us. No, there is no reputation which can be compared to his.
 * Napoleon I of France, "Napoleon: In His Own Words" (1916), p. 74.

 * Time in culture is capable of many arrangements. Dante read today sets up different relations, very likely, from Dante read in his own decades, but the change is not in Dante nor in his truth, although many will say so. These truths, the truth of the voyage, of the skull-grinding horror, the white chance, leopard, star, and belief, are present. There is no particular question of death, since we are in a life where imaginative experience is given and taken.
 * Muriel Rukeyser The Life of Poetry (1949)

 * In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for people who charged usurious interest rates. Today we don't need the hellfire, the pitchforks, or the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law that caps interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent.
 * Bernie Sanders Our Revolution (2016)

 * His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no conductor.
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821).

 * That great genius conceived, in his vast imagination, the mysteries of the invisible creation, and unveiled them to the eyes of the astonished world.
 * Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, Historical view of the literature of the south of Europe, translated by Thomas Roscoe, Vol. I (London, 1823), p. 366.

 * Dante Alighieri wrote in the fourteenth century that the spirit of poetry abounds "in the tangled constructions and defective pronunciations" of vernacular speech where language is renewed and transformed. His vision resonates today with the faulty speech of migrants creating the sounds and intonations of the future.
 * Cecilia Vicuña The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (2009)

 * Sa réputation s'affermira toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit guère. II y a de lui une vingtaine de traits qu'on sait par cœur: cela suffit pour s'épargner la peine d'examiner le reste.
 * His reputation will last because he is little read. Twenty pointed things in him are known by rote, which spare people the trouble of being acquainted with the remainder.
 * Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 'Dante' (1765), trans. William F. Fleming.
 * Variant translation: He enjoys an immortal reputation because he is seldom read. Everyone knows by heart some twenty quotations from his writings, and that relieves them of the necessity of examining the remainder.

 * Dante's Inferno was the first book to give me a real thrill. I thought Doré's drawings in it remarkable, and I became exceedingly curious about his work.
 * Art Young: His Life and Times (1939)

title: Dante Alighieri