Summary Christina Rossetti quotes

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI QUOTES

STRONG FEMALE VOICE

‘Lizzie uttered not a word… Lest they should cram a mouthful in’ (Goblin Market)

‘the evil people/Worn out by her resistance’ (Goblin Market)

‘I did not wince’ (Twice)

‘I take my heart in my hand –/I shall not die, but live’ (Twice)

‘Take my share of a fickle heart… I wash my hands thereof.’ (Maude Clare)

‘what you leave’ said Nell ‘I’ll take’ (Maude Clare)

‘though you’re taller by the head… and much more fair/I’ll love him till he loves me best/Me
best of all, Maude Clare.’ (Maude Clare)

‘I never said I loved you, John’ (No, Thank You John)

‘Meg or Moll would take/Pity upon you, if you’d ask’ (No, Thank You John)

‘Don’t call me false… I’d rather answer ‘No,’ to fifty Johns/Than answer ‘Yes,’ to you. (No,
Thank You John)

‘turn and look once more/And smite a rock.’ (Good Friday)

‘Raise me a dais of silk and down’ (A Birthday)

‘When I am dead, my dearest… plant thou no roses at my head’ (Song)

‘Be the green grass above me’ (Song)

‘Oh vanity of vanities, desire!’ (Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde)

‘I tell my secret? No indeed, not I’ (Winter: My Secret)

‘Only, my secret’s mine, and I won’t tell.’ (Winter: My Secret)

‘I cannot ope to everyone who taps’ (Winter: My Secret)

‘I wear my mask for warmth’ (Winter: My Secret)

‘To be pecked at by every wind that blows?’ (Winter: My Secret)

, ‘Spring’s an expansive time: yet I don’t trust… April with its rainbow-crowned brief
showers… May, whose flowers/One frost may wither through the sunless hours.’ (Winter:
My Secret)

‘Perhaps my secret I may say/Or you may guess.’ (Winter: My Secret)

WEAK FEMALE VOICE

‘It’s a weary life, it is, she said’ (From the Antique)

‘I wish and I wish I were a man’ (From the Antique)

‘Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie’ (Goblin Market)

‘Curious Laura chose to linger’ (Goblin Market)

‘She dwindled… To swift decay’ (Goblin Market)

‘Let me live or die’ (Twice)

‘Yet a woman’s words are weak/You should speak, not I.’ (Twice)

‘I smiled at the speech you spoke/At your judgement that I heard’ (Twice)

‘The door was shut. I looked between/Its iron bars; and saw it lie’ (Shut Out)

‘now I sit here quite alone/Blinded with tears’ (Shut Out)

‘Yet if you should forget me for a while… do not grieve’ (Remember)

‘Better by far you should forget and smile/Than that you should remember and be sad.’
(Remember)

RELIGIOUS BELIEF/RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD AS SOMETHING POSITIVE

‘Refine with fire its gold/Purge Thou its dross away’ (Twice)

‘I shall not die, but live’ (Twice)

‘All that I have I bring/All that I am I give’ (Twice)

‘Smile Thou and I shall sing/But shall not question much.’ (Twice)

‘My heart is like a singing bird’ (A Birthday)

‘My heart is like an apple tree… bent with thickest fruit’ (A Birthday)