WIST Quotations

Shakespeare, William -- Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, sc. 1, ll. 238ff (1.1.238-245) (1605)

Dave — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:25:00 +0000

HELENA: Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste.
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, sc. 1, ll. 238ff (1.1.238-245) (1605)
(Source)

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1877-02), “On Falling in Love,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 35

Dave — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 17:47:38 +0000

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other’s eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and centrepoint of God’s creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow-creature.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1877-02), “On Falling in Love,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 35
(Source)

Collected as "Virginibus Puerisque, Part 3" in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 1 (1881).

Homer -- The Iliad [Ἰλιάς], Book 14, l. 216ff (14.216) (c. 750 BC) [tr. Fagles (1990), l. 259ff]

Dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 16:08:27 +0000

There is the heat of Love,
the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper,
irresistible — magic to make the sanest man go mad.

[Ἔνθ’ ἔνι μὲν φιλότης, ἐν δ’ ἵμερος, ἐν δ’ ὀαριστὺς
πάρφασις, ἥ τ’ ἔκλεψε νόον πύκα περ φρονεόντων.]

Homer (fl. 7th-8th C. BC) Greek author
The Iliad [Ἰλιάς], Book 14, l. 216ff (14.216) (c. 750 BC) [tr. Fagles (1990), l. 259ff]
(Source)

Referring to Venus' girdle (cestus). Original Greek. Alternate translations:

In whose sphere
Were all enticements to delight, all loves, all longings were,
Kind conference, fair speech, whose pow’r the wisest doth inflame.
[tr. Chapman (1611), l. 181ff]

In this was every art, and every charm,
To win the wisest, and the coldest warm:
Fond love, the gentle vow, the gay desire,
The kind deceit, the still reviving fire,
Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs,
Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.
[tr. Pope (1715-20)]

It was an ambush of sweet snares, replete
With love, desire, soft intercourse of hearts,
And music of resistless whisper’d sounds
That from the wisest steal their best resolves
[tr. Cowper (1791), l. 256ff]

In it were love, and desire, converse, seductive speech, which steals away the mind even of the very prudent.
[tr. Buckley (1860)]

There Love, there young Desire,
There fond Discourse, and there Persuasion dwelt,
Which oft enthralls the mind of wisest men.
[tr. Derby (1864)]

Therein are love, and desire, and loving converse, that steals the wits even of the wise.
[tr. Leaf/Lang/Myers (1891)]

Love, desire, and that sweet flattery which steals the judgement even of the most prudent.
[tr. Butler (1898)]

Therein is love, therein desire, therein dalliance -- beguilement that steals the wits even of the wise.
[tr. Murray (1924)]

Allurement of the eyes, hunger of longing, and the touch of lips that steals all wisdom from the coolest men.
[tr. Fitzgerald (1974)]

There upon it is affection, upon it desire and seductive dalliance with robs even a sensible person of wisdom.
[tr. Merrill (2007)]

Lowell, Amy -- “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” l. 291 (1914)

Dave — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 17:38:40 +0000

All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) American poet
“Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” l. 291 (1914)
(Source)

See Howell (1659).

Marlowe, Christopher -- The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 5, sc. 1 (sc. 13), l. 1358ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)

Dave — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 14:33:51 +0000

FAUSTUS: Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium —
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. —
[They kiss]
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! —
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
[They kiss again]
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 5, sc. 1 (sc. 13), l. 1358ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)
(Source)

The "B" text (1594; 1616) has the same wording (l. 1874ff).

Keats, John -- “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” st. 10 (1819)

Dave — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:52:27 +0000

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried — “La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

John Keats (1795-1821) English poet
“La Belle Dame sans Merci,” st. 10 (1819)
(Source)

Milne, A. A. -- House at Pooh Corner, ch. 10 “An Enchanted Place” (1928)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

They walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees in a circle; and Christopher Robin knew it was enchanted because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was sixty-three or sixty-four.

A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
House at Pooh Corner, ch. 10 “An Enchanted Place” (1928)
(Source)