Robert Wilson Lynd Quotes

Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside.

Chekhov will seek out the key situation in the life of a cabman or a charwoman, and make them glow for a brief moment in the tender light of his sympathy.

Mystery lies over the sea. Every ship is bound for Thule.

We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

It is in games that many men discover their paradise.

It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.

Mr. Shaw came for a short time recently to be regarded less as an author than as an incident in the European War. In the opinion of many people it seemed as if the Allies were fighting against a combination composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Mr. Shaw.

Most human beings are quite likeable if you do not see too much of them.

We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.

It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

A boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet.

Most human beings are quite likable if you don't see too much of them.

Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.

This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.

The lovers of beauty must unite in a league, and carry out some great propagandist work through the country. They must demand the extermination of the bulldog and the dismantling of the cheap villa, both of which are responsible for a deal of our contentment amid ugliness.

The last spectacle of which Christian men are likely to grow tired is a harbour. Centuries hence there may be jumping-off places for the stars, and our children's children's and so forth children may regard a ship as a creeping thing scarcely more adventurous than a worm. Meanwhile, every harbour gives us a sense of being in touch, if not with the ends of the universe, with the ends of the earth.