Jean Ingelow Quotes

(A Scholar is musing on his want of success.) To strive — and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star

Emily had not one of those poverty-stricken natures which are never glad excepting for some special reason drawing them above themselves. She was naturally joyous and happy, unless under the pressure of an active sorrow that shaded her sky and quenched her sunshine. She lived in an elevated region full of love and wonder, taking kindly alike to reverence and to hope; but she was seldom excited, her feelings were not shallow enough to be easily troubled with excitement, or made fitful with agitation.

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.

"I'm like a good clock," said Crayshaw, "I neither gain nor lose. I can strike, too."

[W]e wish for more in life, rather than for more of it.

Our own faces, seen suddenly, will sometimes tell us things concerning ourselves that we did not suspect before.

It is a comely fashion to be glad,—
Joy is the grace we say to God.

It would be hard to say of any man that he is never right. If he is always thinking that he has forgotten a certain lady, surely he is right sometimes.

In general, the woman bears the small misfortunes and continued disappointments of life best, and the man bears best the great ones.

Is there never a chink in the world above
Where they listen for words from below?

Is it what we impart, or impute to nature from ourselves, that we chiefly lean upon? or does she truly impart of what is really in her to us?

I am glad to think
I am not bound to make the wrong go right;
But only to discover, and to do
With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.

Learn that to love is the one way to know,
Or God or man: it is not love received
That maketh man to know the inner life
Of them that love him; his own love bestowed
Shall do it.

There can be little doubt that it is the fools, and not the wise, who govern the world. While the wise are considering, the fools act; while the wise investigate, the fools have made up their minds; by the time the wise have discovered, the fools have made arrangements, and the wise, for the sake of law and order, or, if not, for the sake of peace and quietness, are obliged to give way.

She was not one of those poets who write verses—very few are; none but such as are poets through and through should ever do that. Verse is only words, the garment that makes the spirit of poetry visible to others; and poets who have but little of the spirit often fritter that little away in the effort to have it seen. But she was a poet in this, that the elemental passions of our nature were strong in her, and she bowed to them with childlike singleness of soul.