Top 35 Coventry Patmore Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is not life at all without delight.”

— Coventry Patmore

2. “To one who waits, all things reveal themselves so long as you have the courage not to deny in the darkness what you have seen in the light.”

— Coventry Patmore

3. “One fool will deny more truth in half an hour than a wise man can prove in seven years.”

— Coventry Patmore

4. “Nearly all of our disasters come from a few fools having the courage of their convictions.”

— Coventry Patmore

5. “Uncommon things must be said in common words.”

— Coventry Patmore

6. “Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly all our disasters come of a few fools having the “courage of their convictions.””

— Coventry Patmore

7. “O, Heart, remember thee That Man is none, Save One.”

— Coventry Patmore

8. “A saint is a person who does almost everything any other decent person does, only somewhat better and with a totally different motive.”

— Coventry Patmore

9. “What a Lover sees in the Beloved is the projected shadow of his own potential beauty in the eyes of God.”

— Coventry Patmore

10. “Those who know God know that it is quite a mistake to suppose that there are only five senses.”

— Coventry Patmore

11. “A woman is a foreign land.”

— Coventry Patmore

12. “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

13. “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.”

— Coventry Patmore

14. “Every evil is some good spelt backwards, and in it the wise know how to read Wisdom.”

— Coventry Patmore

15. “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?’”

— Coventry Patmore

16. “Kind souls, you wonder why, love you, When you, you wonder why, love none We love, Fool, for the good we do, Not that which unto us is done!”

— Coventry Patmore

17. “All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.”

— Coventry Patmore

18. “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

19. “The ardour chills us which we do not share.”

— Coventry Patmore

20. “It is one thing to be blind, and another to be in darkness.”

— Coventry Patmore

21. “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.”

— Coventry Patmore

22. “The promises of God are samples of what is promised; as a handful of wheat is of the barn.”

— Coventry Patmore

23. “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

24. “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

25. “The midge’s wing beats to and fro A thousand times ere one can utter O.”

— Coventry Patmore

26. “None thrives for long upon the happiest dream.”

— Coventry Patmore

27. “A moment’s fruition of a true felicity is enough and eternity not too much.”

— Coventry Patmore

28. “How light the touches are that kiss the music from the chords of life!”

— Coventry Patmore

29. “Uncommon things must be said in common words, if you would have them to be received in less than a century.”

— Coventry Patmore

30. “The sunshine dreaming upon Salmon’s heightIs not so sweet and whiteAs the most heretofore sin-spotted SoulThat darts to its delightStraight from the absolution of a faithful fight.”

— Coventry Patmore

31. “Science is a line, art a superficies, and life or the knowledge of God, a solid.”

— Coventry Patmore

32. “Ah, whither shall a maiden flee, When a bold youth so swift pursues, And siege of tenderest courtesy, With hope perseverant, still renews!”

— Coventry Patmore

33. “To have noughtIs to have all things without care or thought!”

— Coventry Patmore

34. “Ask abundantly, for the measure of your asking shall be that of your receiving.”

— Coventry Patmore

35. “They who ask for no sign shall have many.”

— Coventry Patmore

36. “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.”

— Coventry Patmore

37. “Great is his faith who dares believe his own eyes.”

— Coventry Patmore

38. “Creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.”

— Coventry Patmore