He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that’s so important nowadays.
Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.
What between the duties expected of one during one’s lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be said about land.
Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.
Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.
Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.
The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
A beggar hates his benefactor as much as he hates himself for begging.
Artists reproduce themselves or each other, with wearisome iteration. But criticism is always moving on, and the critic is always developing.
Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.
Children have a natural antipathy to books- handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
We live in the age of the overworked and the undereducated.
When I went to America I had two secretaries, one for autographs, one for locks of hair. Within six months the one had died of writer’s cramp, the other was completely bald.
Life under a good government is rarely dramatic; life under a bad government is always so.
Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared.
Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
Perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part.