Life & Wisdom Quote by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins lands a small paradox that doubles as a manifesto: the true influence of “masterpieces” isn’t imitation, but provocation. He “admires” first - the necessary humility before craft - then “do otherwise,” a pivot that reads like both defiance and survival. The line refuses the pious Victorian idea that great art forms a canon to be obeyed. For Hopkins, greatness is catalytic, not prescriptive.

The verb choice matters. “Studying” suggests discipline, even reverence; “effect” makes it sound almost scientific, as if exposure to genius triggers an opposite reaction in the artist’s nervous system. That’s the subtext: the anxiety of influence, long before the phrase existed. Masterpieces threaten to crowd the room, so the self must carve out space by swerving. Admiration becomes fuel for deviation.

Context sharpens the sting. Hopkins was a Jesuit convert writing in a period when poetic taste leaned toward smoothness and moral clarity. His own innovations - sprung rhythm, dense alliteration, “inscape” and “instress” - are basically “do otherwise” as a method. Studying the best doesn’t tame him; it intensifies his private laws of sound and perception. There’s also a quiet rebuke to merely “cultured” readers: if your engagement with masterpieces ends in tasteful repetition, you’ve missed the point.

The line flatters no one, including its speaker. It admits envy, awe, and the need to dodge them. That’s why it works: it turns influence from a lineage into a pressure system, and originality into the honest byproduct of taking greatness seriously enough to resist it.