George Herbert Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by George Herbert with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
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“Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin.”
Meaning & context
Herbert stages divine Love as a host welcoming a speaker who feels unworthy, turning shame and hesitation into a Christian meditation on grace and acceptance.
Source details
“Love (III),” posthumously published in The Temple (1633), represented by Poetry Foundation. “Love” functions as a personified divine presence within explicitly Christian devotional poetry; the exchange is theological lyric, not secular relationship advice.
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“Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th’ action fine.”
Meaning & context
Herbert’s devotional speaker argues that ordinary work can acquire spiritual value when it is performed conscientiously for a religious purpose rather than for status.
Source details
“The Elixir,” in The Temple, published in 1633. The stanza is explicitly Christian devotional poetry about motive, work and service; it should not be flattened into secular evidence about job performance.
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“If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.”
Meaning & context
Herbert’s poem imagines restlessness and weariness as forces that may turn a person toward God when abundance and comfort do not, within its specifically Christian account of human desire.
Source details
“The Pulley,” from The Temple (1633), represented by Poetry Foundation. The ending is spoken by God within Herbert’s devotional conceit and expresses Christian theology rather than a medical or psychological explanation of fatigue.