Rossetti Quotes & Sayings

Everyone looks like they've just stepped out of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting that he never got around to finishing because even he knew it was too over the top. It — Joe Queenan

I'll love him til he loves me best
Me best of all, Maude Clare — Christina Rossetti

The violets whisper from the shade Which their own leaves have made: Men scent our fragrance on the air, Yet take no heed Of humble lessons we would read. — Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land. — Christina Rossetti

Hurt no living thing: Ladybird, nor butterfly, Nor moth with dusty wing. — Christina Rossetti

What is green? The grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? Clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange! — Christina Rossetti

Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace,
Grant me. Father, a servant's place. — Christina Rossetti

O cousin Kate, my love was true,
Your love was writ in sand:
If he had fooled not me but you,
If you had stood where i stand,
He'd not have won me with his love,
Nor bought me with his land;
I would have spit into his face
And not have taken his hand.
Yet I have a gift you have not got,
And seem not like to get:
For all your clothes and wedding-ring
I've little doubt you fret.
My fair-haired son, my shame, my pride,
Cling closer, closer yet:
Your father would give lands for one
to wear his coronet — Christina Rossetti

For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer's unreturning track. — Christina Rossetti

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall - the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me. — Christina Rossetti

Heaven is the presence of God. — Christina Rossetti

He had an extraordinarily casual air about him. I'd noticed that before, when he had tossed himself out the window. — Rinsai Rossetti

The rose saith in the dewy morn,
I am most fair;
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn. — Christina Rossetti

For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands — Christina Rossetti

Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know? — Christina Rossetti

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours. — Christina Rossetti

All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?
If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run ! Death runs apace. — Christina Rossetti

I think you should ignore Sara Teasdale (she's a bit of a moper, to be honest.).
Take Christina Rossetti's advice and be fire. — Mary Jane Hathaway

Open wide the windows of our spirits and fill us full of light; open wide the door of our hearts, that we may receive and entertain Thee with all our powers of adoration. — Christina Rossetti

He. Does there have to be a he? It seems weak and unoriginal doesn't it, for stories told by girls to always have a he? — Rinsai Rossetti

We must not look at goblin men — Christina Rossetti

Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

You have been mine before - How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar, your neck turned so, Some veil did fall, - I knew it all of yore. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies; Nay, who but infants question in such wise, twas one of my most intimate enemies. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rest, rest at the heart's core ... till joy shall overtake. — Christina Rossetti

Oh how the family affections combat
Within this heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul! Neither from owl nor from bat
Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

And all the winds go sighing, for sweet things dying. — Christina Rossetti

Obedience is the fruit of faith;
patience is the early blossom on the tree of faith. — Christina Rossetti

She cried, "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men. — Christina Rossetti

I am unlike most other people because I began, not in the body of my mother, but in the brain of my father. He invented me, you see. He sat down one day and dreamed me up. -- The Girl With Borrowed Wings — Rinsai Rossetti

So tired am I, so weary of to-day,
So unrefreshed from foregone weariness,
So overburdened by foreseen distress,
So lagging and so stumbling on my way,
I scarce can rouse myself to watch or pray,
To hope, or aim, or toil for more or less,--
Ah, always less and less, even while I press
Forward and toil and aim as best I may.
Half-starved of soul and heartsick utterly,
Yet lift I up my heart and soul and eyes
Which fail in looking upward — Christina Rossetti

It is beautiful, the world, and life itself. I am glad I have lived. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Bourne Underneath the growing grass, Underneath the living flowers, Deeper than the sound of showers: There we shall not count the hours By the shadows as they pass. Youth and health will be but vain, Beauty reckoned of no worth: There a very little girth Can hold round what once the earth Seemed too narrow to contain. — Christina Rossetti

When wombats do inspire/I strike my disused lyre — Christina Rossetti

Love shall be our token; love be yours and love be mine. — Christina Rossetti

The Wombat is a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness! — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all? — Christina Rossetti

O Lord, I cannot plead my love of Thee: I plead Thy love of me: - the shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea. — Christina Rossetti

The city mouse lives in a house, The garden mouse lives in a bower — Christina Rossetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me. — Christina Rossetti

I believe because I am told to believe ... My faith is faith; it is not evolved out of argumentation, nor does it seek the aid of that. — Christina Rossetti

Who shall tell the lady's grief
When her Cat was past relief?
Who shall number the hot tears
Shed o'er her, beloved for years?
Who shall say the dark dismay
Which her dying caused that day? — Christina Rossetti

Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground. — Christina Rossetti

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun. — Christina Rossetti

And may you happy live, And long us bless. — Christina Rossetti

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: So this winged hour is dropt to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Good deeds are many, but good lives are few ... — Christina Rossetti

This life is but the passage of a day,
This life is but a pang and all is over;
But in the life to come which fades not away
Every love shall abide and every lover. — Christina Rossetti

Love loves for ever,
And finds a sort of joy in pain,
And gives with nought to take again,
And loves too well to end in vain:
Is the gain small then?
Love laughs at "never",
Outlives our life, exceeds the span
Appointed to mere mortal man:
All which love is and does and can
Is all in all then. — Christina Rossetti

Where there are no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank. — Christina Rossetti

For one man is my world of all the men this wide world holds; O love, my world is you. — Christina Rossetti

Hope dead lives nevermore,
No, not in heaven. — Christina Rossetti

Flowers preach to us if we will hear. — Christina Rossetti

O passing angel, speed me with a song, a melody of heaven to reach my heart and rouse me to the race and make me strong. — Christina Rossetti

Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke,
I love, as you would have me, God the most;
Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look
Unready to forego what I forsook;
This say I, having counted up the cost,
This, tho' I be the feeblest of God's host,
The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.
Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you overmuch;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him.
I cannot love Him if I love not you. — Christina Rossetti

We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots? — Christina Rossetti

Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
When life was sweet because you call'd them sweet? — Christina Rossetti

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;
Tot wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams. — Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago. — Christina Rossetti

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy — Christina Rossetti

So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom today the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-orrow:
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow. — Christina Rossetti

Choose love not in the shallows
but in the deep. — Christina Rossetti

Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The lilies say: Behold how we
Preach without words of purity. — Christina Rossetti

When I Am Dead, My Dearest
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget. — Christina Rossetti

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I have a room whereinto no one enters
Save I myself alone:
There sits a blessed memory on a throne,
There my life centres. — Christina Rossetti

And sometimes I remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek,
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak. — Christina Rossetti

A Sonnet is a
moment's
monument,
Memorial from the
Soul's eternity
To one dead
deathless hour. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Oh roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me Grown old before my time. — Christina Rossetti

All things that pass Are wisdom's looking-glass. — Christina Rossetti

Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth. — Christina Rossetti

I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, 'Where? What?' and turn away. — Christina Rossetti

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative. — Ford Madox Ford

He took me in his strong white arms,
He bore me on his horse away
O'er crag, morass, and hairbreadth pass,
But never asked me yea or nay.

He held me fast with book and bell,
With links of love he makes me stay;
Till now I've neither heart nor power
Nor will nor wish to say him nay. — Christina Rossetti

To her whose heart is my heart's quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome. — Christina Rossetti

Give me the lowest place: not that I dare
Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died
That I might live and share
Thy glory by Thy side.
Give me the lowest place: of if for me
That lowest place too high, make one more low
Where I may sit and see
My God and love Thee so. — Christina Rossetti

No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes — Virginia Woolf

Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white. — Christina Rossetti

All earth's full rivers can not fillThe sea that drinking thirsteth still. — Christina Rossetti

A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings. — Christina Rossetti

Hope is like a hairball trembling from its birth ... — Christina Rossetti

I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season it might be;
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So, unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was i to see and to forsee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom, yet, for many a May. — Christina Rossetti

It is not the deed we do Though the deed be never so fair, But the love that the dear Lord looketh for, Hidden with lovely care In the heart of the deed so fair. — Christina Rossetti

The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
'Poor child, poor child': and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head:
He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold. — Christina Rossetti

Gather a shell from the strewn beach And listen at its lips: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea's speech. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Why one day in the country Is worth a month in town; Is worth a day and a year Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion That days drone elsewhere. — Christina Rossetti

In Britain, chinoiserie was eclipsed by the medievalism of Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic Revival, while in Europe japonisme would be chinoiserie's successor. Japonisme never compelled the general middle-class British taste as did the indigenous medieval style. Nonetheless, through extensive importations to Britain of Japanese art and artifacts, notably by the shop Liberty's of London, as well as through the artists James McNeill Whistler and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the architect E.W. Godwin, and the writer Oscar Wilde, the Japanese style of decoration was known in Britain well before 1894. — Linda Gertner Zatlin

There is no time like Spring
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track. — Christina Rossetti

For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope. — Christina Rossetti

Better by far you should forget and smile that you should remember and be sad. — Christina Rossetti

What is pink? A rose is pink
By the fountain's brink. — Christina Rossetti

Life is not always about happy endings. Sometimes it's about finding happiness in the ending you get. — Chip Rossetti

Christmas hath a darkness;
Brighter than the blazing noon;
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low — Christina Rossetti

Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad. — Christina Rossetti

Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts, and no one thank. — Christina Rossetti

Pale sky, white land; like somewhere past the end of the world — Rinsai Rossetti