Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes

The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean.

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow.

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

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives.

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.

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.

Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes.

The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty.

And the best and the worst of this is That neither is most to blame, If you have forgotten my kisses And I have forgotten your name.

There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.

The beast faith lives on its own dung.

Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

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.

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Change lays her hand not upon the truth.

The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

Hope thou not much, and fear thou not at all.

Marvellous mercies and infinite love.

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.

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.

Love, till dawn sunder night from day with fire Dividing my delight and my desire.

Change lays not her hand upon truth.