Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—
The line describes the cruelty of the natural world as a challenge to faith in a loving God. Tennyson wrote it years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, though it is now often read alongside Darwin.
Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.