Top 100 Swinburne Quotes
#1. Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.
Robert Wilson Lynd
#2. Nor had I any illusions about Algernon Charles Swinburne, who often used to stop my perambulator when he met it on Nurses' Walk, at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and pat me on the head and kiss me: he was an inveterate pram-stopper and patter and kisser.
Robert Graves
#4. When I see imposters like ... Swinburne, [and] Fleay, who know as much early English as my dog, & who fancy they can settle Chaucer difficulties as they blow their noses, then I ridicule or kick them. But earnest students I treat with respect, & am only too glad to learn from them.
James Turner
#5. The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.
Rebecca West
#7. I remember the way we parted, The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted And knew we should both forget.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#8. 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
#9. White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#10. For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#13. 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 eternal In an eternal night.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#16. Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. Where might is, the right is:
Long purses make strong swords.
Let weakness learn meekness:
God save the House of Lords!
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#27. We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#29. 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
#31. To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#34. In fierce March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#35. There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#36. Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#38. Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#39. You have a face that suits a woman
For her soul's screen
The sort of beauty that's called human
In hell, Faustine.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#40. No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#41. 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
#43. 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
#44. To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#45. Heart's ease of pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart's ease.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#46. A little soul scarce fledged for earth Takes wing with heaven again for goal, Even while we hailed as fresh from birth A little soul.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#48. Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
And the loves that complete and control
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
That wear out the soul.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#50. O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#52. The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.
Oscar Wilde
#53. On the mountains of memory by the world's wellsprings, in all man's eyes, where the light of life of him is on all past things, death only dies.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#56. 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
#57. When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#61. 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.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#63. She knows not loves that kissed her She 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
#67. I that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet
Here, that must love you to live.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#68. 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
#71. It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.
Richard Swinburne
#72. Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran .
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#75. 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
#78. You came, and the sun came after,
And the green grew golden above;
And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter,
And the meadowsweet shook with love
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#81. Love laid his sleepless head
On a thorny rose bed:
And his eyes with tears were red,
And pale his lips as the dead.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#82. A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink Might tempt, should heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#83. Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading: Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her: Love lies bleeding.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#84. Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate;
Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate
For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#86. Love, as is told by the seers of old,
Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#88. And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#90. When I hear that a friend has fallen into matrimony, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#92. 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.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#95. 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.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#96. I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#98. Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow ...
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#99. Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#100. Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
