Arthur Symons Quotes

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

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

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.

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.

It is in their eyes that their magic resides.

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.

Art begins when a man wishes to immortalize the most vivid moment he has ever lived.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 had my dreams of Venice, but nothing that I had dreamed was as impossible as what I found.

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.

Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me.

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

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

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

And I would have, now love is over, An end to all, an end: I cannot, having been your lover Stoop to become your friend!

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

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.

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

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