Phantastes, a Faerie Romance for Men and Women

I sat a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander. (Location 462)

I had never imagined that such capacity for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by this assembly of forms and spiritual sensations, which yet were far too vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to my own and another mind. (Location 508)

I should have ill endured, the day before, to be called BOY; but now the motherly kindness of the word went to my heart; and, like a boy indeed, I burst into tears. (Location 707)

"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all—without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty, mistaking her for the lady of the marble—another kind altogether, I should think. But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty, though; for it is that which is constantly wearing her away within, till, at last, the decay will reach her face, and her whole front, when all the lovely mask of nothing will fall to pieces, and she be vanished for ever. So a wise man, whom she met in the wood some years ago, and who, I think, for all his wisdom, fared no better than you, told me, when, like you, he spent the next night here, and recounted to me his adventures." (Location 715)

They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. (Location 1145)

There was something noble in him, but it was a nobleness of thought, and not of deed. He may yet perish of vile fear." (Location 2067)

"Go, my son, and do something worth doing," (Location 2159)

'Past tears are present strength,' (Location 2234)

"Now if you will join us, we will soon teach you to make your armour; and we will fight together, and work together, and love each other as never three loved before. (Location 2238)

She was bearing the sun to the unsunned spots. The light and the music of her broken globe were now in her heart and her brain. (Location 2465)

Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, "I am what I am, nothing more." "I have failed," I said, "I have lost myself—would it had been my shadow." (Location 2477)

I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. (Location 2479)

he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. (Location 2480)

I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. (Location 2711)

All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. (Location 2715)

For, in truth, that I should be able if only to think such things as I had been thinking, was an unspeakable delight. An hour of such peace made the turmoil of a lifetime worth striving through. (Location 2730)

Could I translate the experience of my travels there, into common life? This was the question. (Location 2746)

Yet I know that good is coming to me—that good is always coming; though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. (Location 2767)