From Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus:

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl- cave of Destiny, and to receive no Answer but an Echo.

men ask now; Where is the Godhead; our eyes never saw him?

Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and the Mechanical Profit and Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia (infection of the eye) and hallucination they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present to me.

The painfullest feeling; writes he, is that of your own Feebleness; ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery.

But for me, so strangegly unprosperous has I been, the net result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in?

Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe?

A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness.
I kept a lock upon my lips; why should I speak much with that shifting variety of so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls Frienship was but an incredible tradition?
The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary; and savage also.
Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?

Quite another thing in practice; every window of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-spattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust?

I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other death scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage.

What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death?
Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it! And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever.

Shells of Man!

Solitude is invaluable; for who could speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp?

Too heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh! Yet surely his bands are loosening: one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with a second youth.

For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Welldoing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel or Freedom.

there is always the strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar music, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail.

The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!

From John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

To say that one person's desires and feelings are stronger and more various than those of another is merely to say that he has more of the raw material of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but certainly of more good.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese 22

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point- what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, what we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved,- where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death- hour rounding it.

From Aurora Leigh

And when I heard my father's language first
From alien lips which had no kiss for mine
I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept.
And some one near me said the child was mad.

Ryan Adam's Strawberry Wine.