Arthur Symons Quotations

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.

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.

Night, a more perfect day.

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

It is in their eyes that their magic resides.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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