Caverns Quotes

• In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Sea, Rivers

  "Kubla Khan" l. 1 (1816)

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• Far over misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Dwarves, Long, Gold

  J. R. R. Tolkien (2012). “The Hobbit: Illustrated by Alan Lee”, p.36, HarperCollins UK

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• Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.

  William Blake

  Men, Perception, Infinity

  William Blake (2008). “The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake”, p.39, Univ of California Press

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• Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Distance, Dark, Rocks

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.514, GENERAL PRESS

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• In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lonely, Loneliness, Care

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.366

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• Enchanted worlds still exist because the child within us never dies. The doorways may be more obscure, but we can still seek them out. There are still noble adventures to undertake. There are still trees that speak and caverns that lead to nether realms. There will always be faeries and elves within nature because they will always be dancing in our hearts.

  Ted Andrews

  Children, Healing, Heart

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• BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Etna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Block, Wine, Science

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.26, University of Georgia Press

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• I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
  And out of the caverns of rain,
  Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
  I arise and unbuild it again.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Children, Rain, Clouds

  'The Cloud' (1819)

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• But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Being Yourself, Lonely, Lying

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• Friends depart, and memory takes them To her caverns, pure and deep.

  Thomas Haynes Bayly

  Friendship, Memories, Pure

  Thomas Haynes Bayly (1844). “Songs and Ballads, Grave and Gay”, p.48

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• Souls of poets dead and gone,
  What Elysium have ye known,
  Happy field or mossy cavern,
  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
  Have ye tippled drink more fine
  Than mine host's Canary wine?

  John Keats

  Wine, Mermaid, Soul

  'Lines on the Mermaid Tavern' (1820)

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• Far over the Misty Mountains cold, To dungeons deep and caverns old, We must away, ere break of day, To seek our pale enchanted gold. The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells, In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells. The pines were roaring on the heights, The wind was moaning in the night, The fire was red, it flaming spread, The trees like torches blazed with light.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Sleep, Dark, Night

  J. R. R. Tolkien, “Over The Misty Mountains Cold”

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• See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your Shame.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Heart, Eye, Touching

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)”, p.1732, Delphi Classics

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• people themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; impossible to know all the places inside of them. Impossible even to imagine.

  Lauren Oliver

  Dark, Tunnels, Space

  Lauren Oliver (2015). “Delirium Trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, Requiem”, p.498, Hachette UK

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• God knows all that is done in the most secret caverns of the heart. No place is deprived of his presence.

  Stephen Charnock

  Heart, Secret, Done

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• Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Dark, Stills, Candle

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• At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Inspiration, Writing, Night

  H.P. Lovecraft, Steven Jones, Philip (2017). “H.P. Lovecraft's Worlds - Volume Two: Dagon and Other Tales”, p.3, Caliber Comics

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• Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty.

  John Muir

  Beauty, Nature, Eye

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.517, Library of America

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• It's not that I literally think I'm a fearie. It's just that I feel so different from most people. And this idea of a race living underground in caverns, spending all their days dancing and playing the fiddle and eating flowers and reciting poetry and sharing their dreams, that to me sounds much more real than the way people live in this world, hating and fighting and wanting and hurting.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Dream, Hurt, Hate

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• Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Baby, Holy Water, Firsts

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.26, University of Georgia Press

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• I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Daughter, Ocean, Clouds

  'The Cloud' (1819)

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• What if I bade you leave
  The cavern of the mind?
  There's better exercise
  In the sunlight and wind.

  William Butler Yeats

  Exercise, Wind, What If

  William Butler Yeats (2001). “The Major Works”, p.162

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• And suddenly the moon withdraws her sickle from the lightening skies, and to her sombre cavern flies, wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.

  Oscar Wilde

  Moon, Sky, Yellow

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “Salome”, p.26, Broadview Press

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• If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
  For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru chinks of his cavern.

  William Blake

  Beautiful, Eye, Men

  "A Memorable Fancy". "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". Book by William Blake, www.bartleby.com. 1793.

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• I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness.

  Sylvia Plath

  Eye, Feminism, Pits

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.60, Anchor

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