Arthur Symons Quotes

Hardly any one is able to see what is before him, just as it is in itself. He comes expecting one thing, he finds another thing, he sees through the veil of his preconception, he criticizes before he has apprehended, he condemns without allowing his instinct the chance of asserting itself.

There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything.

The wind is rising on the sea,The windy white foam-dancers leap;And the sea moans uneasily,And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.

Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

As perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me: all things leave me: You remain.

My life is like a music-hall,Where, in the impotence of rage,Chained by enchantment to my stall,I see myself upon the stageDance to amuse a music-hall.

The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.

Love I never associated with the senses, it was not even passion that I wanted; it was a conscious, subtle, elaborate sensuality, which I knew not how to procure.

The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.

Night, a more perfect day.

To have loved, to have been made happy thus, / What better fate has life in store for us?

It is in their eyes that their magic resides.

I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things.

Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art.

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses.

I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.

All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices.

A place has almost a shyness of a person with strangers; its secret is not to be surprised by too direct interrogation.

But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves.

I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood. Here between sea and sea in a fairy wood, I have found a delicate wave-green solitude.

Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

The dead are happy, having no desire. I rise and fall, and rise and fall again, Something is in me, famishing for bread, Baffled and unappeasable as fire.

Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire / Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.

The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.

There is not a dream which may not come true, if we have the energy which makes, or chooses, our own fate ... It is only the dreams of those light sleepers who dream faintly that do not come true.

He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.

I have laid sorrow to sleep;Love sleeps.She who oft made me weepNow weeps.

Wandering, ever wandering,
Because life holds not anything so good
As to be free of yesterday, and bound
Towards a new to-morrow ; and they wend
Into a world of unknown faces, where
It may be there are faces waiting them,
Faces of friendly strangers, not the long
Intolerable monotony of friends.

The joy of earth is yours, O wanderers,
The only joy of the old earth, to wake,
As each new dawn is patiently renewed,
With foreheads fresh against a fresh young sky.
To be a little further on the road,
A little nearer somewhere, some few steps
Advanced into the future, and removed
By some few counted milestones from the past;
God gives you this good gift, the only gift
That God, being repentant, has to give.

Wanderers, you have the sunrise and the stars;
And we, beneath our comfortable roofs,
Lamplight, and daily fire upon the hearth,
And four walls of a prison, and sure food.
But God has given you freedom, wanderers.

Criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch twig for the castigation of offenders.

God, like all highest things, Hides light in shade, And in the night his visitings To sleep and dreams are clearliest made.

The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises, The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.