Edmund Gosse Quotes

In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life. To be marooned, to be shut up in a solitary cell, to inhabit a lighthouse, or to camp alone in a forest, these have always seemed to me afflictions too heavy to be borne, even in imagination. A state in which conversation exists not, is for me an air too empty of oxygen for my lungs to breathe it.

Never mind whom you praise, but be very careful who you blame.

I was much affected by the internal troubles of the Punch family; I thought that with a little more tact on the part of Mrs. Punch and some restraint held over a temper, naturally violent, by Mr. Punch, a great deal of this sad misunderstanding might have been prevented.

The future comes like an unwelcome guest.

Two Points of View

If I forget, -
May joy pledge this weak heart to sorrow!
If I forget, -
May my soul's coloured summer borrow
The hueless tones of storm and rain,
Of ruth and terror, shame and pain, -
If I forget!

Though you forget, -
There is no binding code for beauty;
Though you forget, -
Love was your charm, but not your duty;
And life's worst breeze must never bring
A ruffle to your silken wing, -
Though you forget.

If I forget, -
The salt creek may forget the ocean;
If I forget, -
The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion,
May I sink meanlier than the worst,
Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst, -
If I forget!

Though you forget, -
No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
Though you forget, -
You filled my barren life with treasure,
You may withdraw the gift you gave,
You still are lord, I still am slave, -
Though you forget.

The man who satisfies a ceaseless intellectual curiousity probably squeezes more out of life in the long run than anyone else.

The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty.