“Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.”

“Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight.”

“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!”

“On a Fine Morning” in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)WHENCE comes Solace?--Not from seeingWhat is doing, suffering, being,Not from noting Life’s conditions,Nor from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the gleam Whereby gray things golden seem. This do I this heyday, holdingShadows but as lights unfolding,As no specious show this momentWith its iris-hued embowment; But as nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man.”

“I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one or two of them particularly-- almost as one of their own sex. I mean I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel--to be on their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man-- no man short of a sensual savage--will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look 'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes.”

“Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”