“Wanting is—what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
Where is the blot?”
Wanting—is what?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
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Robert Browning 179
English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era 1812–1889Related quotes
“But what good’s abundance if nobody can experience it?”
Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 23 (p. 256).
Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5<!-- The sense of the ineffable, p. 87 -->
Context: In our reflection we must go back to where we stand in awe before sheer being, faced with the marvel of the moment. The world is not just here. It shocks us into amazement.
Of being itself all we can positively say is: being is ineffable. The heart of being confronts me as enigmatic, incompatible with my categories, sheer mystery. My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance. What I face I cannot utter or phrase in language. But the richness of my facing the abundance of being endows me with marvelous reward: a sense of the ineffable.
“Pray for wet Summers, Winters wanting Rain.”
The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks
“Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”
Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 8, p. 143
Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)
“Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away.”
Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne