Gerard Manley Hopkins

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.”

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

“Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.”

“All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we knew how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is the blight man was born for. It is Margaret you mourn for.”

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

“Beauty is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.”

“Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.”

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

“The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise.”

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.”

“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.”

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

“...Where we, even where we mean To mend her we end her, When we hew or delve:After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve Strokes of havoc únselve The sweet especial scene, Rural scene, a rural scene, Sweet especial rural scene.”

“Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star?”

“The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.”

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

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”