Arthur Symons
A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.Collection: Romantic
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 clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises, The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.Collection: Spring
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.Collection: Dream
Art begins when a man wishes to immortalize the most vivid moment he has ever lived.Collection: Art
Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.Collection: Life
To have loved, to have been made happy thus, / What better fate has life in store for us?Collection: Love
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.Collection: Dream
It is in their eyes that their magic resides.Collection: Cat
Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Discovery
The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.Collection: London
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.Collection: Beauty
I had my dreams of Venice, but nothing that I had dreamed was as impossible as what I found.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Women
Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me.Collection: Lonely
The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.Collection: Art
God, like all highest things, Hides light in shade, And in the night his visitings To sleep and dreams are clearliest made.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Vision
All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices.Collection: Art
But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves.Collection: Eye
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!Collection: Love
Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire / Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.Collection: Love
Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses.Collection: Love
I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Life Is Like
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.Collection: Moving
The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth.Collection: Desert
The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.Collection: Sunset
The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.Collection: World
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.Collection: Passion
My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.Collection: Soul
I have laid sorrow to sleep;Love sleeps.She who oft made me weepNow weeps.Collection: Sleep
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.Collection: Sleep
I heard the sighing of the reedsAt noontide and at evening,And some old dream I had forgottenI seemed to be remembering.Collection: Dream
There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything.Collection: Work
Night, a more perfect day.Collection: Night
A place has almost the shyness of a person, with strangers; and its secret is not to be surprised by a too direct interrogation.Collection: Travel