Gerard Manley Hopkins
Quotations

"How all’s to one thing wrought! "

- On a piece of music

 

"I am happy, so happy."

- his last words as he lay dying of typhoid fever

 

"I think no one can admire beauty of the body more than I do and it is of course a comfort to find beauty in a friend or a friend in beauty. But this kind of beauty is dangerous."

- in a letter to Robert Bridges

 

"...the higher and more attractive parts of the art put a strain upon the passions."

- from a letter to Mowbray Baillie - on his reasons for not pursuing his ambition to paint

 

"Even with one companion ecstasy is almost banished: you want to be alone and to feel that, and leisure--all pressure taken off."

- written in his journal while travelling in Switzerland

 

""No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" "

- Letter to Burns