Skip to content

John Addington Symonds Quotes

1840–1893 England

John Addington Symonds (5 October 1840 – 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of homosexuality.

England
Critics
Journalists
Poets

Also known as: Symonds, John Addington

Random John Addington Symonds quote

8 quotes

Gods fade; but God abides and in man’s heart
Speaks with the clear unconquerable cry
Of energies and hopes that can not die.

No seed shall perish which the soul hath sown.

These things shall be! A loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of science in their eyes.

O heaven-blue eyes, blonde tresses where the breeze
Plays over sunburned cheeks in sea-blown air!

O dark brown eyes! O tangles of dark hair!

She smiled, and the shadows departed;
She shone, and the snows were rain;
And he who was frozen-hearted
Bloomed up into love again.

Shades are we; and of shades we weave
A trifling pleasant make-believe;
Then pass into the shadowy night,
Where formless shades blindfold the light.

It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet the light that shone in them was crescent.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1878)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Addington Symonds (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.