Gerard Manley Hopkins

I am surprised you should say fancy and aesthetic tastes have led me to my present state of mind: these would be better satisfied in the Church of England, for bad taste is always meeting one in the accessories of Catholicism.

I think that the trivialness of life is, and personally to each one, ought to be seen to be, done away with by the Incarnation.

Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height …

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.

I say more, the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father …

What I do is me: for that I came.

On this day by God's grace I resolved to give up all beauty until I had His leave for it.