COVENTRY PATMORE

The more wild and incredible your desire, the more willing and prompt God is in fulfilling it, if you will have it so.

To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.

What a Lover sees in the Beloved is the projected shadow of his own potential beauty in the eyes of God.

Ask abundantly, for the measure of your asking shall be that of your receiving.

None thrives for long upon the happiest dream.

Great is his faith who dares believe his own eyes.

All the love and joy that a man has ever received in perception is laid up in him as the sunshine of a hundred years is laid up in the bole of the oak.

Science is a line, art a superficies, and life or the knowledge of God, a solid.

Creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.

Those who know God know that it is quite a mistake to suppose that there are only five senses.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

I drew my bride, beneath the moon,Across my threshold; happy hour!But, ah, the walk that afternoonWe saw the water-flags in flower!

The ardour chills us which we do not share.

They who ask for no sign shall have many.

Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly all our disasters come of a few fools having the "courage of their convictions."

Kind souls, you wonder why, love you, When you, you wonder why, love none We love, Fool, for the good we do, Not that which unto us is done!

Every evil is some good spelt backwards, and in it the wise know how to read Wisdom.

A woman is a foreign land.

It is one thing to be blind, and another to be in darkness.

The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise; the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.

To have noughtIs to have all things without care or thought!

How light the touches are that kiss the music from the chords of life!

Love wakes men, once a lifetime each; They lift their heavy lids, and look; And, lo, what one sweet page can teach They read with joy, then shut the book.

The midge's wing beats to and fro A thousand times ere one can utter O.