Manley Hopkins Quotes & Sayings

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet, Long live the weeds and the wildness yet. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

It kills me to be time's eunuch and never to beget. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

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

I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems ... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on. — Seamus Heaney

I do not write for the public. You are my public and I hope to convert you. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star? — 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

The idea is to take the most ordinary things and make them extraordinary, as Gerard Manley Hopkins does in his poems. — Alfonso A. Ossorio

The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree.
(from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire') — Gerard Manley Hopkins

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The achieve of; the mastery of the thing! — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Best ideal is the true and other truth is none. All glory be ascribed to the holy Three in One. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

One could say that Hopkins practiced transubstantiation in every poem. By mysterious talent, he changed plain element into reality sublime. He encountered a jumble of weather, birds, trees, branches, waters, blooms, dewdrops, candle flames, prayers, then instressed them and, delighted, wrote in his journal, 'Chance left free toact falls into an order. — Margaret R. Ellsberg

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, madefor
things that give and mean to give God glory. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I think that the trivialness of life is, and personally to each one, ought to be seen to be, done away with by the Incarnation. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

What I do is me, for that I came. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

No, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Even with one companion ecstasy is almost banished. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I consider my selfbeing ... that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I bear a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry, -- sweets for bitter.

Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar's gardens blow, --
And a quince in hand, -- not one
Is set, because their buds not spring;
Spring not, 'cause world is wintering.... — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end? — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal- con, in his riding — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! Oh look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! — Gerard Manley Hopkins

This creative tension between wonderful and terrible is named so well by Gerard Manley Hopkins, as only poets can. Even the long title of his poem reveals his acceptance of the ever-changing flow of Heraclites and also his trust in the final outcome: "That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection." Flesh fade, and mortal trash fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, — Richard Rohr

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
(From "Spring") — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves
goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,
Crying _What I do is me: for that I came_.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

By the by, if the English race had done nothing else, yet if they left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

I thought how sadly beauty of inscape was unknown and buried away from simple people and yet how near at hand it was if they had eyes to see it and it could be called out everywhere again. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it? — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Searching nature I taste self but at one tankard, that of my own being. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Your personal boundaries protect the inner core of your identity and your right to choices. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smitting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a sloppail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the Stooks arise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behavior Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies? — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Our Lord Jesus Christ , my brethren, is our hero, a hero all the world wants. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things.
("Pied Beauty") — Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting
yet. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Story, as I understood it by reading Faulkner, Hardy, Cather, and Hemingway, was a powerful and clarifying human invention. The language alone, as I discovered it in Gerard Manley Hopkins and Faulkner, was exquisitely beautiful, also weirdly and mysteriously evocative. — Barry Lopez

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

What are works of art for? to educate, to be standards. To produce is of little use unless what we produce is known, is widely known, the wider known the better, for it is by being known that it works, it influences, it does its duty, it does good. We must try, then, to be known, aim at it, take means to it. And this without puffing in the process or pride in the success. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Beauty is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Crystal sincerity hath found no shelter but in a fool's cap. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

Pied Beauty -
Glory be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced
fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

Moral beauty, so Gerard Manley Hopkins said, is dangerous. If such individuals could take his advice to meet it, then let it alone, things would be easier. But it is just which they can not do. — R.D. Laing

When I compare myself, my being-myself, with anything else whatever, all things alike, all in the same degree, rebuff me with blank unlikeness. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

It is the blight man was born for. It is Margaret you mourn for. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

What you look at hard seems to look at you. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Horrible to say, in a manner I am a Communist. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we knew how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The beauty of a woman is first a soulful beauty. And yes, as we live it out, own it, inhabit our beauty, we do become more lovely. More alluring. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "Self flashes off frame and face." Our true self becomes reflected in our appearance. But it flows from the inside — John Eldredge

Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum ) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World's strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

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

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, 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

We have him [God] before our eyes, masked in the sacred Host — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Ask of Her, the mighty Mother.
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?-
Growth in every thing -
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and green world all together,
Star-eyed strawberry breasted
Throstle above Her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within,
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Beowulf stands out as a poem which makes extensive use of this kind of figurative language. There are over one thousand compounds in the poem, totalling one-third of all the words in the text. Many of these compounds are kennings. The word 'to ken' is still used in many Scottish and Northern English dialects, meaning 'to know'. Such language is a way of knowing and of expressing meanings in striking and memorable ways; it has continuities with the kinds of poetic compounding found in nearly all later poetry but especially in the Modernist texts of Gerard Manley Hopkins and James Joyce. — Ronald Carter

Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins somewhere describes how he mesmerized a duck by drawing a line of chalk out in front of it. Think of me as the duck; the chalk, softly wearing itself away against the tiny pebbles embedded in the corporate concrete, is Joyce's forward-luring rough-smooth voice on the cassettes she gives me. Or, to substitute another image, since one is hardly sufficient in Joyce's case, when I let myself really enter her tape, when I let it surround me, it is as if I'm sunk into the pond of what she is saying, as if I'm some kind of patient, cruising amphibian, drifting in black water, entirely submerged except for my eyes, which blink every so often. Each word comes floating up to me like a thick, healthy lily pad and brushes past my head. — Nicholson Baker

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

I say that we are wound With mercy round and round As if with air. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The male quality is the creative gift. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Birds buildbut not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine,O thou lord of life, send my roots rain. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Why wouldst thou rude on me they wring-world right foot rock? — Gerard Manley Hopkins

And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit. — Gerard Manley Hopkins