“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.”

—  Gerard Manley Hopkins

Diary (April 1864)
Letters, etc

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Par…" by Gerard Manley Hopkins?
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins 81
English poet 1844–1889

Related quotes

“If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 237]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Clifford D. Simak photo

“One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world’s tomorrow, another world’s today. And yesterday is tomorrow, and tomorrow is the past.
Except, there wasn’t any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one’s mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backwards and see what-once-had-been…
One road was open, but another road was closed. Not closed, of course, for it had never been. For there wasn’t any past, there never had been any, there wasn’t room for one. Where there should have been a past there was another world.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (pp. 195-196)

Gaio Valerio Catullo photo

“Now he goes along the dark road, thither whence they say no one returns.”
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

III, lines 11–12
Carmina

Euclid photo

“There is no royal road to geometry.”
Non est regia ad Geometriam via.

Euclid (-323–-285 BC) Greek mathematician, inventor of axiomatic geometry

μὴ εἶναι βασιλικὴν ἀτραπὸν ἐπί γεωμετρίαν, Non est regia [inquit Euclides] ad Geometriam via
Reply given when the ruler Ptolemy I Soter asked Euclid if there was a shorter road to learning geometry than through Euclid's Elements.The "Royal Road" was the road built across Anatolia and Persia by Darius I which allowed rapid communication and troop movement, but use of ἀτραπός (rather than ὁδός) conveys the connotation of "short cut".
The Greek is from Proclus (412–485 AD) in Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, the Latin translation is by Francesco Barozzi, 1560) the English translation follows Glenn R. Morrow (1970), p. 57 http://books.google.com/books?id=JZEHj2fEmqAC&q=royal#v=snippet&q=royal&f=false.
Attributed

Reinhold Niebuhr photo

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other. Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Full version of the original (ca. 1942)
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)

Anastacia photo

“Each day another boy and girl sets foot into this world
One reaches out to touch the sky
One never learns to fly.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Who's Gonna Stop the Rain
Not That Kind (2000)

Eric Hoffer photo

“Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1955)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

John Jay photo

“Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer.”

John Jay (1745–1829) American politician and a founding father of the United States

Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.

William Kent Krueger photo

“And what is happiness, Nathan? In my experience, it's only a moment's pause here and there on what is otherwise a long and difficult road. No one can be happy all the time.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Related topics