19 quotes
The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.
The Certain Hour (1916)
Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, — and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?
The Certain Hour (1916)
Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.
The Certain Hour (1916)
Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a certain moment by a work wherein the writer himself noted the impression of the world which he received at a certain hour.
The Certain Hour (1916)
Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life.
The Certain Hour (1916)
At what cost, now, may one attempt to write perfectly of beautiful happenings?
The Certain Hour (1916)
Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death always provide some obstacle to prevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from ever coming true?"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Some few there must be in every age and every land of whom life claims nothing very insistently save that they write perfectly of beautiful happenings.
The Certain Hour (1916)
And one is fain to be climbing where only angels have trod,
But is fettered and tied to another's side who fears that it might look odd.
The Certain Hour (1916)
The Terrible and Marvellous History of Manuel Pig-Tender That Afterwards Was Named Manuel the Redeemer.
The Certain Hour (1916)
Hey, my masters, lords and brothers, ye that till the fields of rhyme,
Are ye deaf ye will not hearken to the clamor of your time?
The Certain Hour (1916)
Always the fact remains that to the mentally indolent this book may well seem a volume of disconnected short stories. All of us being more or less mentally indolent, this possibility constitutes a dire fault.
The Certain Hour (1916)
It spurred me to such action as I took, — but it has robbed me of sugared eloquence, it has left me chary of speech. It is necessary that I climb very high because of my love for you, and upon the heights there is silence.
The Certain Hour (1916)
I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books — brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity.
The Certain Hour (1916)
My books are not quite the books I was to write when you and I were young. But I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens ...
The Certain Hour (1916)
Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;
One thing unshaken stays:
Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover;
Whereby decays
Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal
Of hourly change begot,
Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal,
And changes not; — Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers
Find altered by-and-bye,
When, with possession, time anon discovers
Trapped dreams must die, —
For he that visions God, of mankind gathers
One manlike trait alone,
And reverently imputes to Him a father's
Love for his son.
The Certain Hour (1916)
Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him; — That is, when they remember he still exists. Who, you ask, is this fellow? — What matter names?
He is only a scribbler who is content.
The Certain Hour (1916)
From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled,
Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands, —
Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart,
Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him,
Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way.
The Certain Hour (1916)
And one would worship a woman whom all perfections dower,
But the other smiles at transparent wiles; and he quotes from Schopenhauer. Thus two by two we wrangle and blunder about the earth,
And that body we share we may not spare; but the Gods have need of mirth.
The Certain Hour (1916)