All Quotes

"And he related also, with much gusto, how in a country-house he had told his host one evening that he had spent the day in hard literary work, and that, when asked what he had done, he had said, "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma." "And in the afternoon?" "In the afternoon–well, I put it back again.""

"Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform."

"Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce."

"To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is so entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar."

"Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."

"There is always more brass than brains in an aristocracy."

"Good kings are the enemies of democracy."

"Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there."

"There are few things easier than to live badly and to die well."

"Experience, the name men give to their mistakes."

"Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities."

"I cannot understand your nature. If my nature had been made to suit your comprehension rather than my own requirements, I am afraid I would have made a very poor figure in the world."

"To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret of the whole."

"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."

"Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty."

"Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! Here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name."

"Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do."

"[E]verybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching."

"If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture...In a house, we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure."

"It is always the unreadable that occurs."

"His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning."

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."

"The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art."

"Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose."

"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."

"There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought."

"Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography."

"Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."

"Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read."

"Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

"I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood."

"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it."

"It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest."

"Action ... is the last resource of those who know not how to dream."

"There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not."

"As for modern Journalism, its not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest."

"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

"It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams."

"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."

"It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not."

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."

"There is no sin except stupidity."

"Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

"England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force."

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."

"Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms."