The Reading Room

“The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?”

“First our pleasures die - and then Our hopes, and then our fears - and when These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust - and we die too.”

“I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.”

“The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.”

“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”

“I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.”

“The Moon And, like a dying lady lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky east A white and shapeless mass. Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?”

“Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.”

“When soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

“O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.”

“First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too.”

“When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.”

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted”

“I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.”

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

“Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.”

“The being called God...bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar.”

“Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.”

“God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.”

“How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!”

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”

“When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid - in which case all comment is superfluous - or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.”

“Is it not odd that the only generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker.”

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself.”

“Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.”

“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”

“God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.”

“I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Has led me- who knows how? To thy chamber-window, Sweet!”

“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”

“Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory.”

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

“War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.”

“In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.”

“Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.”

“And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

“Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.”

“That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon.”

“Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.”

“Soul meets soul on lovers lips.”

“Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.”