Arthur Quiller-Couch > Quotes

“Murder your darlings.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch

“We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve.”
― Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

“Just go on reading, as well as you can, and be sure that when the children get the thrill of the story, for which you wait, they will be asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to answer.”
― Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

“If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that the Creator has an idea of a man, so long shall I be sure that no uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate.... but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so much that tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion.”
― Sir Arthur Quiller Couch

“As we
dwell here between two mysteries, of a soul within and an ordered
Universe without, so among us are granted to dwell certain men of more
delicate intellectual fibre than their fellows--men whose minds have, as
it were, filaments to intercept, apprehend, conduct, translate home to us
stray messages between these two mysteries”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch

“we may prate of democracy, but actually, a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing

“His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just
a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his
discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither
disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on
the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to
more orderly, contented, hopeful lives.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch

“God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, "Man made haste to return the compliment.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poetry

“sing to those that hold the vital shears
And turn the adamantine spindle round
Of which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poetry

“Trust in good verse then:
They only shall aspire,
When pyramids, as men
Are lost i'the funeral fire.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poetry

“This Universe is not a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it at all.)”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poetry

“Renan says, ‘La Verité consiste dans les nuances.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Quiller-Couch

“Lo cierto —por poco que nos honre como nación— es que, debido a alguna falta de nuestro sistema social y económico, el poeta pobre no tiene hoy en día, ni ha tenido durante los pasados doscientos años, la menor oportunidad.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing

“the old bottles he renovated to hold that joyous wine,”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Quiller-Couch

“That Holy Thing THEY all were looking for a king   To slay their foes and lift them high: Thou cam'st, a little baby thing     That made a woman cry. O Son of Man, to right my lot   Naught but Thy presence can avail; Yet on the road Thy wheels are not,     Nor on the sea Thy sail! My how or when Thou wilt not heed,   But come down Thine own secret stair, That Thou mayst answer all my need—     Yea, every bygone prayer.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Bulchevy's Book of English Verse

“The real tragedy of the library at Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, On The Art of Reading

“The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.... But little did the infant dream That all the treasures of the world were by; And that himself was so the cream And crown of all which round about did lie. Yet thus it was: the Gem, The Diadem, The ring enclosing all That stood upon this earthly ball, The heavenly Eye, Much wider than the sky Wherein they all included were, The glorious soul that was the King,”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, Poetry

“La Verité consiste dans les nuances.”
― Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing: Enriched edition. Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914