Quote

Books are influential in proportion to their obscurity, provided that the obscurity be that of inexpressible Realities. The Bible is the most obscure book in the world. He must be a great fool who thinks he understands the plainest chapter of it.

Coventry Patmore

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Coventry Patmore
Age: 73 †
Born: 1823
Born: July 23
Died: 1896
Died: November 26
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Redbridge
Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Fool
Realities
Books
Chapters
Reality
Understands
Book
Obscure
Plainest
Must
Provided
Inexpressible
Great
Proportion
Obscurity
Thinking
Thinks
Chapter
World
Bible
Influential

More quotes by Coventry Patmore

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Ask abundantly, for the measure of your asking shall be that of your receiving.
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A woman is a foreign land.
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The midge's wing beats to and fro A thousand times ere one can utter O.
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If we may credit certain hints contained in the lives of the saints, love raises the spirit above the sphere of reverence and worship into one of laughter and dalliance: a sphere in which the soul says: 'Shall I, a gnat which dances in Thy ray, Dare to be reverent?'
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It is one thing to be blind, and another to be in darkness.
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Every evil is some good spelt backwards, and in it the wise know how to read Wisdom.
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Then sleep the seasons, full of might While slowly swells the pod, And rounds the peach, and in the night The mushroom bursts the sod. The winter comes: the frozen rut Is bound with silver bars the white drift heaps against the hut and night is pierced with stars.
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The ardour chills us which we do not share.
Coventry Patmore
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Science is a line, art a superficies, and life or the knowledge of God, a solid.
Coventry Patmore
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Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred - may not even be encumbrances.
Coventry Patmore
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The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.
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All the love and joy that a man has ever received in perception is laid up in him as the sunshine of a hundred years is laid up in the bole of the oak.
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Creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.
Coventry Patmore
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Life is not life at all without delight.
Coventry Patmore
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The modern Agnostic improves upon the ancient by adding I don't care to I don't know.
Coventry Patmore
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To have noughtIs to have all things without care or thought!
Coventry Patmore
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They who ask for no sign shall have many.
Coventry Patmore
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The more wild and incredible your desire, the more willing and prompt God is in fulfilling it, if you will have it so.
Coventry Patmore
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Uncommon things must be said in common words.
Coventry Patmore
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Love wakes men, once a lifetime each They lift their heavy lids, and look And, lo, what one sweet page can teach They read with joy, then shut the book.
Coventry Patmore