“Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that.”

“I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed Love me so much as now you say you do?Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea, Ask of the roses if they love the rain, Ask of the little lark, that will not sing Till day break, if it loves to see the day:And yet, these are but empty images, Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire So great that all the waters of the main Can not avail to quench it.”

“Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.”

“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose“, cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all. “ It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man? ”

“Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.”

“Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.”

“And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart”