Coventry Patmore
On 23 July 1823, Coventry Patmore was born in what is now the London Borough of Redbridge, beginning a life that would be spent working in English letters as a poet, writer, and literary critic.
A citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Patmore worked across two related vocations: poetry and literary criticism. He wrote in the English language, and his occupations as both poet and critic placed him within the broader literary culture of his time. Beyond these established roles, the specific publications, awards, and associations that shaped the arc of his career are not detailed in the available record.
Patmore died on 26 November 1896 at Walhampton, at the age of seventy-three. His life spanned the greater part of the nineteenth century, during which he held the dual occupational identities of poet and literary critic that define how he is understood today.
The Library of Congress catalogs his work under the authorized label "Patmore, Coventry, 1823-1896," and Open Library likewise records his birth and death years as 1823 and 1896 respectively. These entries in major bibliographic institutions reflect the continued preservation of his writings more than a century after his death at Walhampton.
Quotes by Coventry Patmore
The sunshine dreaming upon Salmon’s heightIs not so sweet and whiteAs the most heretofore sin-spotted SoulThat darts to its delightStraight from the absolution of a faithful fight.
If we may credit certain hints contained in the lives of the saints, love raises the spirit above the sphere of reverence and worship into one of laughter and dalliance: a sphere in which the soul says: ‘Shall I, a gnat which dances in Thy ray, Dare to be reverent?’
Let me love Thee so that the honour, riches, and pleasures of the world may seem unworthy even of hatred – may not even be encumbrances.
Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly all our disasters come of a few fools having the “courage of their convictions.”
To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.
To one who waits, all things reveal themselves so long as you have the courage not to deny in the darkness what you have seen in the light.
One fool will deny more truth in half an hour than a wise man can prove in seven years.