It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
— Arthur Machen
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More quotes by Arthur Machen
We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing.
The Great God Pan (1894)
You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.
The Great God Pan (1894)
There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil.
The Great God Pan (1894)
He had the dreadful misfortune to be an intellectual, and to be born in the country.
The Hill of Dreams (1907)
Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes.
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