Quotation
The most frequently quoted lines in the poem are perhaps
- I hold it true, whate'er befall;
- I feel it when I sorrow most;
- 'Tis better to have loved and lost
- Than never to have loved at all.
This stanza is to be found in Canto 27. The last two lines are usually taken as offering a meditation on the dissolution of a romantic relationship. However the lines originally referred to the death of the poet's beloved friend. Another much-quoted phrase from the poem is "nature, red in tooth and claw," found in Canto 56, referring to humanity:
- Who trusted God was love indeed
- And love Creation's final law
- Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
- With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
Also, the following are found in Canto 54
- So runs my dream, but what am I?
- An infant crying in the night
- An infant crying for the light
- And with no language but a cry.
Read more about this topic: In Memoriam A.H.H.
Famous quotes containing the word quotation:
“In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
“It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman’s brain!”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)