Quote#Politics & Power
I am surprised you should say fancy and aesthetic tastes have led me…
Quote byGerard Manley Hopkins · 1844–1889
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letters, etc, Letter to his father, Manley Hopkins (16 October 1866).
English (original)
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.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
More from Gerard Manley Hopkins
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.
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 …
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.
Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.