Others

A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.

I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like. on starting Emma

There is nothing to it. You only have to hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?

Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked.

‘Oh! it is only a novel! … only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda:’ or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee.

When he was reading, he drew his eyes along over the leaves, and his heart searched into the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.

Art is born of humiliation.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

A poet’s hope: to be,

I and the public know

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear

Time that with this strange excuse

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

The main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavours, in all branches of knowledge—theology, philosophy, history, art, science—to see the object as in itself it really is.

Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole:

Ah, love, let us be true To one another!

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.

So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history, for while poetry is concerned with universal truth, history treats of particular facts.