Arthur Symons Quotes

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

The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.

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

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.

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.

The wind is rising on the sea,The windy white foam-dancers leap;And the sea moans uneasily,And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.

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

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

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

It is in their eyes that their magic resides.

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

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

My life is like a music-hall,Where, in the impotence of rage,Chained by enchantment to my stall,I see myself upon the stageDance to amuse a music-hall.

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

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.

There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything.

Night, a more perfect day.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

A place has almost the shyness of a person, with strangers; and its secret is not to be surprised by a too direct interrogation.

I heard the sighing of the reedsAt noontide and at evening,And some old dream I had forgottenI seemed to be remembering.

The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.

I have laid sorrow to sleep;Love sleeps.She who oft made me weepNow weeps.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves... He must have the passion of a lover.

Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

There are certain natures to whom work is nothing the act of work everything.