Francis Thompson quotes:

All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

Baby smiled, mother wailed, Earthward while the sweetling sailed; Mother smiled, baby wailed, When to earth came Viola.

An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident.

Oh invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, o world unknowable, we know thee.

Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with your desires.

The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,Moves all the labouring surges of the world.

But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, No more curled state unfold, Translated to a vase of gold; In burning throne though they keep still Serenities unthawed and chill.

Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.

So for thy spirit did devise Its Maker seemly garniture, Of its own essence parcel pure.-- From grave simplicities a dress, And reticent demureness, And love encinctured with reserve; Which the woven vesture would subserve. For outward robes in their ostents Should show the soul's habiliments. Therefore I say,--Thou'rt fair even so, But better Fair I use to know.

The devil doesn't know how to sing, only how to howl.

And left the flushed print in a poppy there.

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there: Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame. With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank, And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine When the eastern conduits ran with wine.

Thou cannot stir a flower Without troubling a star.

There is no expeditious road To pack and label men for God, And save them by the barrel-load. Some may perchance, with strange surprise, Have blundered into Paradise.

Babies breathe a lot more rapidly than adults do, and what's more, they're also growing quickly and so they're absorbing lots more into the body and they're more fragile in terms of development and so on.

Little Jesus, was Thou shy Once, and just so small as I? And what did it feel like to be Out of Heaven, and just like me?

In all change, well looked into, the germinal good out-veils the apparent ill.

The fairest things have fleetest end, Their scent survives their close: But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others pain And perish in our own.

The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her.

Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word, And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.

A dog, I will maintain, is a very tolerable judge of beauty, as appears from the fact that any liberally educated dog does, in a general way, prefer a woman to a man.