Gerard Manley Hopkins Quotes

I thought how sadly beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it and it could be called out everywhere again.

For myself I make no secret, I look forward with eager desire to seeing the matchless beauty of Christ’s body in the heavenly light.

Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in everything.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it.

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.

A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.

ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, my brethren, is our hero, a hero all the world wants.

I am surprised you should say fancy and aesthetic tastes have led me to my present state of mind: these would be better satisfied in the Church of England, for bad taste is always meeting one in the accessories of Catholicism.

Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose.

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

The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.

Generaciones han pisado, pisado, pisado;
y todo se ha chamuscado con la industria;
empañado, manchado, con el trabajo;
y lleva la suciedad del hombre, el olor del hombre:
la tierra está desnuda, y el pie, calzado, ya no siente.
Y con todo esto, la naturaleza nunca se agota,
en el fondo de las cosas vive la muy amada lozanía;
y aunque se perdieron las luces por el negro Oeste,
ah, la mañana nace en el castaño umbral del Este.

I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.