BritLit Lines

Please humor me. These lines/quotes caused me to stop in the middle of my BritLit reading and gape. Please read them. I can't be the only one who feels the impact of such beautiful phrases.

{I mean, maybe XD}

"A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" ~ R. Browning, Andrea del Sarto

"I regret little, I would change still less." ~ R. Browning, Andrea del Sarto

"I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before myself." ~ Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"A thing unknown without a name
Born of the air and doomed to flame."
~ Barbauld, An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study

"There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he kept as meany as he meant." ~ Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

"But I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations." ~ Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll certainly try hard to forget the fact." ~ Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

"The truth is very rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!" ~ Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

"...that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
~ Tennyson, Ulysses

"Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so?"
~ Arnold, The Scholar Gypsy

"Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose tomorrow the ground won today--"
~ Arnold, The Scholar Gypsy

"But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves." Orwell, Politics and the English Language

"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time."
~ Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

"Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea."
~ Thomas, Fern Hill

"But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes of lights
__________And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
__________The Lady of Shalott."
~ Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott

{Make time to read all of "The Lady of Shalott" sometime. It's one of the most perfect things I've ever read. I get chills and fall inside myself at the ending every time.}

~Stephanie