Quote#Wisdom
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken
Quote byAlgernon Charles Swinburne · 1837–1909
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Poems and Ballads: Second Series (1878), "A Forsaken Garden", st. 3.
English (original)
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain; The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain.
— Algernon Charles Swinburne
More from Algernon Charles Swinburne
Sweet Love, that art so bitter.
I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends.
Rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in English; a rhymeless lyric is a maimed thing.
The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal.
There was a bad poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff. But the public, though dull, Has not quite such a skull As belongs to believers in Clough.
God by God flits past in thunder, till His glories turn to shades; God to God bears wondering witness how His gospel flames and fades. More was each of these, yet they were, than man their servant seemed: Dead are all of these, and man …