Top 80 Algernon Charles Swinburne Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Faith speaks when hope is disassembled; faith lives when hope dies dead.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

52. “Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

53. “Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever, Here and there for awhile would borrow Rest, if rest might haply deliver Sorrow...”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

54. “Thou has conquered, O pale Galilean.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

55. “To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

56. “The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

57. “My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When Time and God give judgment.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

58. “Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

59. “Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light: Nor sound of waters shaken, Nor any sound or sight: Nor wintry leaves nor vernal; Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

60. “There grows No herb of help to heal a coward heart.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

61. “In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

62. “There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

63. “Despair the twin-born of devotion.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

64. “She knows not loves that kissed her She knows not where. Art thou the ghost, my sister, White sister there, Am I the ghost, who knows? My hand, a fallen rose, Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

65. “Is not Precedent indeed a King of men? A Word from the Psalmist.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

66. “To sleep, to swim, and to dream, for ever.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

67. “I dore not always touch her, lest the kiss Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss, Brief, bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin; Nathless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

68. “To say of shame – what is it? Of virtue – we can miss it; Of sin-we can kiss it, And it’s no longer sin.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

69. “When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

70. “In fierce March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

71. “Forget that I remember And dream that I forget.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

72. “Heart’s ease of pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart’s ease.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

73. “The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

74. “For the worst is this after all; if they knew me, not a soul upon earth would pity me.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

75. “The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

76. “Fear that makes faith may break faith.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

77. “Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

78. “God’s own hand Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him The end of all our ends is, but with us Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this At least is ours, to make them righteous.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

79. “There was a poor poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff, But the public, though dull, Had not such a skull As belonged to believers in Clough.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

80. “No blast of air or fire of sun Puts out the light whereby we run With girdled loins our lamplit race, And each from each takes heart of grace And spirit till his turn be done.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

81. “For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose’s, And love is more cruel than lust.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

82. “Let weakness learn meekness.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

83. “When I hear that a friend has fallen into matrimony, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

84. “Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows That wear out the soul.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

85. “I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

86. “The beast faith lives on its own dung.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

87. “Hope knows not if fear speaks truth, nor fear whether hope be blind as she.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne