Jean Ingelow Quotes

Crowds of bees are giddy with clover Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

Divine Love came down to take on itself our sins, but there is no Saviour to do the like for our mistakes.

But two are walking apart forever And wave their hands for a mute farewell.

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.

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.

[U]gliness of the right sort is a kind of beauty. It has some of the best qualities of beauty—it attracts observation and fixes the memory.

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

There is nothing like action to show a man what he really is.[…] Till the decisive moment came he had not perhaps the remotest suspicion that he cared for human life in the abstract; and here he stands dripping, having risked his own to save that of an absolute stranger. He perceives the awful and mysterious oneness of humanity, how it draws the units to the whole. He is not independent, as he may have thought; he is part of all.

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.

Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire—
Our only greatness is that we aspire.

And we do want poetry for its beauty […] Yes, only for its beauty; for its moral power over us—its teaching, comforting, and elevating power all depend on its beauty.

Let me be only sure; for sooth to tell
The sorest dole is doubt.

When our thoughts are born,
Though they be good and humble, one should mind
How they are reared, or some will go astray
And shame their mother.

It would be very unlucky for cats if people in a body should discover how much more jolly it was to be out in the warm golden mist of moonlight, when all was so fresh and sweet, than tucked up in their heated bedrooms under the low ceiling that shuts out the stars.

What a bore it is […] that the dull and uneducated and unimaginative should possess a dogged contempt for danger, and a kind of stupid fearlessness that we are never to have. I do not see how a highly imaginative man can have much animal courage.