Quotes About Swinburne

G. K. Chesterton says,' put in Wimsey, 'that most people with a very well-defined style write at times what looks like bad parodies of themselves. He mentions Swinburne, for instance – that bit about "From the lilies and languors of virtue to the raptures and roses of vice.

God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see:Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.

The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty.

My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When Time and God give judgment.

The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple grimalkin.

Some of the verse of Tennyson shows immense technical skill, is better than anything of Shelley or Swinburne.43 I cite Tennyson's consummate skill to show that it is not merely a question of the slipshod, or of a degeneration of the ear. It is something deeper than that. It is a further stage in the disintegration of the intellect, the further separation of sound, image and thought.

The world of Swinburne does not depend upon some other world which it simulates; it has the necessary completeness and self-sufficiency for justification and permanence.

Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.

It is like Swinburne sat down on his soul's darkest night and designed an organized sport.

Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.