Quote collection
251 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life - that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience."
"Make the short story tremendously succinct - with a very short pulse or rhythm - and the closest selection of detail - in other words summarise intensely and deeply and keep down the lateral development. It should be a little gem of bright, quick, vivid form"
"I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will."
"The artist is present in every page of every book from which he sought so assiduously to eliminate himself."
"I don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like."
"...he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days."
"Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation."
"To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing."
"When you forget to eat, you know you're alive."
"However British you may be, I am more British still."
"Of course what he most intensely dreams of is being taken out on walks, and the more you are able to indulge him the more will he adore you and the more all the latent beauty of his nature will come out."
"To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him."
"I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all."
"The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . ."
"She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table."
"London is on the whole the most possible form of life."
"If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land."
"The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription."
"I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated."
"In a play, certainly, the subject is of more importance than in any other work of art. Infelicity, triviality, vagueness of subject, may be outweighed in a poem, a novel, or a picture, by charm of manner, by ingenuity of execution; but in a drama the subject is of the essence of the work-it is the work. If it is feeble, the work can have no force; if it is shapeless, the work must be amorphous."