NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
Gerard Manley HopkinsRead
Birds buildbut not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine,O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on creation, the passage of time, and a yearning for spiritual nourishment.
In this quote, Gerard Manley Hopkins contrasts the natural instinct of birds to build with his own struggles in producing meaningful work. He expresses a deep longing for divine inspiration and sustenance as he grapples with the challenges of life and creativity, hinting that true creation is a labor that requires both time and a connection to a higher power.
Themes
CreationTimeInspirationSpiritualityNature
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the creative process, one might say, 'As Gerard Manley Hopkins reflects, we often feel like we're not creating enough and yearn for that divine inspiration.'
More from Gerard Manley Hopkins
All quotes →And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley HopkinsRead
Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! Oh look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Gerard Manley HopkinsRead
Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.
Gerard Manley HopkinsRead
Nothing is so beautiful as spring - when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.
Gerard Manley HopkinsRead
For Christ plays in ten thousand places,/ Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/ To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Gerard Manley HopkinsRead
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It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
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God works powerfully, but for the most part gently and gradually.
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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