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"For human nature, being more highly pitched, selved, and distinctive than anything in the world, can have been developed, evolved, condensed, from the vastness of the world not anyhow or by the working of common powers but only by one of finer or higher pitch and determination than itself."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"Beauty ... is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. On the Origin of Beauty: A Platonic Dialogue. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. Letter, May 22, 1880, to A.W.M. Baillie. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"I am surprised you shd. say fancy and aesthetic tastes have led me to my present state of mind: these wd. be better satisfied in the Church of England, for bad taste is always meeting one in the accessories of Catholicism."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. letter, Oct. 16, 1866, to his father, Manley Hopkins. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953).
Written in 1880, during a spiritual retreat at Liverpool. |
"It seems then that it is not the excellence of any two things (or more) in themselves, but those two things as viewed by the light of each other, that makes beauty."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. On the Origin of Beauty: A Platonic Dialogue. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"Any day, any minute we bless God for our being or for anything, for food, for sunlight, we do and are what we were meant for, made for—things that give and mean to give God glory."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. Conclusion of "The Principle or Foundation." Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953).
an address based on The Spiritual Exercises, written by St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus. The Exercises, a series of guided meditations which serves as a key text in Jesuit spirituality, were an important influence on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. |
"For myself I make no secret, I look forward with eager desire to seeing the matchless beauty of Christ's body in the heavenly light."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. sermon, Nov. 23, 1879. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"Searching nature I taste self but at one tankard, that of my own being."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953). |
"Even with one companion ecstasy is almost banished."
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet, Jesuit priest. Journal, July 25, 1868. Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. W.H. Gardner (1953).
Describing his ascent of the Breithorn during a trip to Switzerland with his Oxford colleague, Edward Bond. |
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Gerard Manley Hopkins
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