Quotes from Arthur Symons

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood. Here between sea and sea in a fairy wood, I have found a delicate wave-green solitude.

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

Before the thought of Cleopatra every man is an Antony.

Love I never associated with the senses, it was not even passion that I wanted; it was a conscious, subtle, elaborate sensuality, which I knew not how to procure.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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