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"A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Oct. 13, 1886, to Robert Bridges. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (1991). |
"The Indian gods are imposing, the Greek gods are not. Indeed they are not brave, not self-controlled, they have no manners, they are not gentlemen and ladies."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Oct. 23, 1886, to Robert Bridges. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (1991). |
"I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Oct. 18, 1882, to Robert Bridges. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (1991). |
"You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Oct. 24, 1883, to Robert Bridges. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (1991). |
"I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Oct. 17, 1881, to Richard Watson Dixon. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (1991). |
"It kills me to be time's eunuch and never to beget."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Sept. 1, 1885, to Robert Bridges. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (1991). |
"Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. God's Grandeur (written 1877), published in Poems (1918). |
"The world is charged with the grandeur of God."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet. God's Grandeur (l. 1). . .
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Catherine Phillips, ed. (1986) Oxford University Press. |
"morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet. God's Grandeur (l. 12-14). . .
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Catherine Phillips, ed. (1986) Oxford University Press. |
"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. God's Grandeur (written 1877), published in Poems (1918). |
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