Alfred Austin

"[A]mbition should be spoken of as not the last, but the first infirmity of noble minds, of which they gradually purge themselves as they grow more mature."

"One must be intoxicated by scenery, in order to appreciate it. Tranquil survey is not enough, and scrutinising curiosity is fatal."

"Men preach Philosophy, women practise it."

"It is always delightful to have one's feelings expressed by some one else in language of enthusiasm one might oneself be afraid to employ."

"[P]eople who canalise their lives and prearrange their enjoyments lose much of the enchantment which attends the guiding beneficence of chance."

"Goodnight! Now dwindle wan and low The embers of the afterglow, And slowly over leaf and lawn Is twilight's dewy curtain drawn."

"All imitation is exaggeration."

"[T]he charm of a half-neglected old garden arises from its having, once upon a time, not been neglected."

"To homes pervaded by charm, as to works of Art that approach perfection, the more happily constituted minds say 'Yes' without any qualification. The proper homage due to them is absolute assent."

"A person of the right sort is one who has a solid grasp and realistic apprehension of people and things as they are, an irresistible inclination to transfigure them according to his imagination, and an inexhaustible supply of philosophic humour."

"Hospitality should be accidental, spontaneous, and impulsive, not pre-arranged and calculated."

"[T]he Caesars of this world act sagaciously, perhaps, in making as much of their purple as possible. The world is largely governed by tailors and upholsterers."

"A little knowledge is said to be a dangerous thing, but it is not dangerous to the imagination. Knowledge is to the imagination what fuel is to flame. A little feeds it; a great deal extinguishes it."

"He was not far wrong who said that, for choice, he would be a beautiful woman from seventeen to thirty, a successful General from thirty to fifty, and a Cardinal for the rest of his days. But of course he was thinking of Cardinals as they were in the days of Leo X, Julius II, and Sextus V, not as they are today, extremely pious and rather pinched for means."

"He was an Englishman of Englishmen, of the old school of charming manners, flavoured by occasional downrightness of speech."

"One can put up with, indeed more than put up with, a certain amount of technical carelessness in Poetry, provided it be in other respects of a very high order, as not unoften, for instance, in Shakespeare and Byron. But similar blemishes in a picture would be all but fatal to it in the estimation of connoisseurs, since it would be the first thing that struck them in it."

"English maidens are, in certain respects, to Italian maidens as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine."

"[W]henever one wants to cite something wise and true, one has to go either to the ancients or to the eighteenth century for it."

"Where in the lily lurks the mind, Where in the rose discern the soul?More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake; The mountains yet more heartless seem. […]It is their silence that appals, Their aspect motionless that awes, When searching spirit vainly calls On the effect to bare the Cause."

"If Man makes Conscience, then being good Is only being worldly wise, And universal brotherhood A comfortable compromise."

"Doth logic in the lily hide, And where's the reason in the rose?"

"People living and dead, things past and present, all are contributories to that diminutive stream, oneself; a reflection which is essentially consoling, since it associates one with the sum of things and prevents one from living in barren isolation."

"Repress your antipathies, cultivate your sympathies."

"[C]harm appertains to the essence of the person or thing endowed with it. It cannot be acquired, it cannot be got rid of, and its results are produced without effort, since the person who has it cannot help producing them."

"Women are more frequently charming than men, because they are less self-conscious."

"[I]n all periods of transitional thought and belief the conscience suffers, since its old sanctions have been removed and none other have yet taken their place. It is undermined without being adequately propped up."

"[N]o verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess."

"Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal."

"The most generous of critics, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound."

"O'er the wires the electric message came, "He is no better; he is much the same.""

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul."

"Winter is gone, and spring is over. The cuckoo-flowers grow mauver and mauver"