Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 51.
St. 1
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)
Context: The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
“And 't is my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.”
Source: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Lines written in Early Spring.
Quote of Nolde, 1906 in Jahre der Kämpfe (The years of struggles); as cited by Francesco Mazzaferro in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee' - Part Three: Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1900 - 1920
In a letter to William Milliken (1930), quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, Laurie Lisle (1981), p. 128
1930s
30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal.
(7th June 1834) The History of the Lily
(25th October 1834) The Exile. See under Translations from the French
(1835) For Versions from the German, see under Translations from the German
The London Literary Gazette, 1833-1835
“She, though in full-blown flower of glorious beauty,
Grows cold even in the summer of her age.”
Act IV, scene i.
Œdipus (1679)
