Literature and Words

Shakespeare unlocked his heart,’ once more!

Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

‘With this same key

History repeats itself; historians repeat one another.

The original is unfaithful to the translation. of Henley’s translation of Beckford ’s Vathek

Never express yourself more clearly than you think.

Hear the voice of the Bard!

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.

I give you the end of a golden string;

When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

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

Words are the tokens current and accepted for conceits, as moneys are for values.

‘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.

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.

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

A poet’s hope: to be,

I and the public know

Time that with this strange excuse

Poetry makes nothing happen.

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.

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.

If you can’t annoy somebody with what you write, I think there’s little point in writing.