Alas Quote by Hilda Doolittle

“Sheltered Garden" I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, every foot-path leads at last to the hill-crest-- then…

— Hilda Doolittle

That way of inspiration is always open, and open to everyone; it acts as go-between, interpreter, it explains symbols of the past in to-day's…

— Hilda Doolittle

Could beauty be beaten out, O youth the cities have sent to strike at each other's strength, it is you who have kept her…

— Hilda Doolittle

The Christos-image is most difficult to disentangle from its art-craft junk-shop paint-and-plaster medieval jumble of pain-worship and death-symbol.

— Hilda Doolittle

When you would think, "what was the use of it," you'll remember something you can't grasp and you'll wonder what it was.

— Hilda Doolittle

The quivering of Psyche's butterflies.

— Hilda Doolittle

Thoth, Hermes, the stylus, the palette, the pen, the quill endure, though our books are a floor of smouldering ash under our feet.

— Hilda Doolittle

My eye-balls are glass, my limbs marble, my face fixed in its marble mask.

— Hilda Doolittle

The things I have are nameless, old and true; they may not be named; few may live and know.

— Hilda Doolittle

Soft are the hands of Love, but what soft hands clutched at the thorny ground, scratched like a small white ferret or foraging whippet…

— Hilda Doolittle

The elixir of life, the philosopher's stone is yours if you surrender sterile logic, trivial reason.

— Hilda Doolittle

Until it seems the whole city will be covered with gold pollen shaken from the bell-towers, lilies plundered with the weight of massive bees . . .

— Hilda Doolittle