41 quotes
There are things worth being loyal to, surely. Coffee, for instance, or one’s religion.
Flowering Wilderness (1932)
Summer — summer — summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!
Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918)
Only love makes fruitful the soul.
Beyond (1917)
When journalese was at its rifest the Ministry of Health was established - possibly a coincidence.
I cannot explain. There are things that I can't make clear, because you are wilfully blind to all that I believe in.
Saint's Progress (1919)
Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry!
Moods, Songs and Doggerels (1912)
They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.
Fraternity (1909)
Happiness lies in breadth of heart. And breadth of heart is that inward freedom which has the power to understand, feel with, and, if need be, help others.
Art and the War (1915)
Life was to be lived — not torpidly dozed through in this queer cultured place, where age was in the blood! Life was for love — to be enjoyed!
The Dark Flower (1913)
When Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing — deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.
Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place — service — social service — the ants' creed, the bees' creed.
One More River (1933)
Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Raise up the banner of forlorn defence —
A jest to the complacency of crowds —
Bright-haloed with the one diviner sense:
To hold itself as nothing to itself;
And in the quest of its imagined star
To lose all thought of after-recompense!
Moods, Songs and Doggerels (1912)
O Lord of Courage grave,
O Master of this night of Spring!
Make firm in me a heart too brave
To ask Thee anything.
What is Art but the perfected expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self be of enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment whatsoever. The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and back is but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side turned toward each other. Shall not each attempt be judged on its own merits?
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
The world's a fine place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff in it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home...
A Man of Devon (1901)
Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)