Algernon Charles Swinburne quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Top Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

Browse top 39 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Favorite Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

1. "Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go,The wind and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?Come life, come death, not a word be said;Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?" ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

2. "If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together, In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pleasure or grey grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

3. "I will go back to the great sweet mother,Mother and lover of men, the sea.I will go down to her, I and none other,Close with her, kiss her, and mix her with me.Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast;O fair white mother, in days long passedBorn without sister, born without brother,Set free my soul as thy soul is free." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

4. "So Tristram looked on Iseult face to faceand knew not, and she knew not. The last time --The last that should be told in any rhymeHeard anywhere on mouths of singing menThat ever should sing praise of them again;The last hour of their hurtless hearts at rest,The last that peace should touch them, breast to breast,The last that sorrow far from them should sit,This last was with them, and they knew not it." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

5. "Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;Thou art fed with perpetual breath, and alive after infinite changes,And fresh from the kisses of death,Of langours rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean,Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallidAnd poisonous queen." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

6. "Save his own soul he hath no star." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

7. "Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell,Nor wake with wings in heaven, Nor weep for pains in hell;" ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

8. "You have a face that suits a womanFor her soul's screen--The sort of beauty that's called humanIn hell, Faustine." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

9. "A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

10. "And Iseult rose up where she sat apart,And with her sweet soul deepening her deep eyesCast the furs from her and subtle embroideriesThat wrapped her from the storming rain and spray,And shining like all April in one day,Hair, face, and throat dashed with the straying showers,She stood the first of all the whole world's flowers,And laughed on Tristram with her eyes, and said,"I too have heart then, I was not afraid."And answering some light courteous word of graceHe saw her clear face lighten on his faceUnwittingly, with unenamoured eyesFor the last time." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

11. "And with light lips yet full of their swift smile,And hands that wist not though they dug a grave,Undid the hasps of gold, and drank, and gave,And he drank after, a deep glad kingly draught:And all their life changed in them, for they quaffedDeath; if it be death so to drink, and fareAs men who change and are what these twain were.And shuddering with eyes full of fear and fireAnd heart-stung with a serpentine desireHe turned and saw the terror in her eyesThat yearned upon him shining in such wiseAs a star midway in the midnight fixed. Their Galahault was the cup, and she that mixed;Nor other hand there needed, nor sweet speechTo lure their lips together; each on eachHung with strange eyes and hovered as a birdWounded, and each mouth trembled for a world;Their heads neared, and their hands were drawn in one,And they saw dark, though still the unsunken sunFar through fine rain shot fire into the south;And their four lips became one burning mouth." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

12. "We are not sure of sorrow; and joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

13. "From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

14. "Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

15. "To say of shame - what is it? Of virtue - we can miss it; Of sin-we can kiss it, And it's no longer sin." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

16. "Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

17. "Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

18. "Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

19. "Pero ahora, tú eres dos, tú estás partida en dos, carne de su carne, pero corazón de mi corazón." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

20. "Today will die tomorrow." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

21. "O brother, the gods were good to you.Sleep, and be glad while the worldendures.Be well content as the years wearthrough;Give thanks for life, and the loves andlures;Give thanks for life, O brother, anddeath,For the sweet last sound of her feet, herbreath,For gifts she gave you, gracious andfew,Tears and kisses, that lady of yours." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

22. "The half-brained creature to whom books are other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life: those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

23. "But now, you are twain, you are cloven apartFlesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

24. "I am tired of tears and laughter,And men that laugh and weepOf what may come hereafterFor men that sow to reap:I am weary of days and hours,Blown buds of barren flowers,Desires and dreams and powersAnd everything but sleep." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

25. "If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of painWe'd hunt down Love together,Pluck out his flying-feather,And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein;If you were Queen of pleasure And I were King of pain." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

26. "Before the beginning of yearsThere came to the making of manTime, with a gift of tears;Grief, with a glass that ran;Pleasure, with pain for leaven;Summer, with flowers that fell;Remembrance, fallen from heaven,And madness risen from hell;Strength without hands to smite;Love that endures for a breath;Night, the shadow of light,And Life, the shadow of death." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

27. "I dore not always touch her, lest the kissLeave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,Brief, bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

28. "Ask nothing more of me sweet;All I can give you I give;Heart of my heart were it more,More would be laid at your feet.." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

29. "Then star nor sun shall waken,Nor any change of light:Nor sound of waters shaken,Nor any sound or sight:Nor wintry leaves nor vernal;Nor days nor things diurnal;Only the sleep eternalIn an eternal night." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

30. "She knows not loves that kissed herShe knows not where.Art thou the ghost, my sister,White sister there,Am I the ghost, who knows?My hand, a fallen rose,Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

31. "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;/ We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death" ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

32. "Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and controlAll the joys of the flesh, all the sorrowsThat wear out the soul." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

33. "O all fair lovers about the world,There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me. My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirledRound and round in a gulf of the sea;And still, through the sound and the straining stream,Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,The bright fine lips so cruelly curled, And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

34. "I wish we were dead together to-day, Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight, Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,Out of the world's way, out of the light, Out of the ages of worldly weather, Forgotten of all men altogether,As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,Made one with death, filled full of the night." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

35. "Cold eyelids that hide like a jewelHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;The heavy white limbs, and the cruelRed mouth like a venomous flower;When these have gone by with their glories,What shall rest of thee then, what remain,O mystic and somber Delores,Our Lady of Pain?" ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

36. "For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

37. "Lying asleep between the strokes of nightI saw my love lean over my sad bed,Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,But perfect-coloured without white or red.And her lips opened amorously, and said--I wist not what, saving one word--Delight.And all her face was honey to my mouth,And all her body pasture to my eyes;The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighsAnd glittering eyelids of my soul's desire." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

38. "In a land of sand and ruin and goldThere shone one woman, and none but she" ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

39. "And a bird overhead sang Follow, And a bird to the right sang Here;And the arch of the leaves was hollow, And the meaning of May was clear." ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

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Tu sais… quand on est tellement triste on aime les couchers de soleil…-Le jour des quarante-trois fois tu étais donc tellement triste? Mais le petit prince ne répontit pas."
Author: Antoine De Saint Exupéry

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