31 books
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28 voters


“To burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”
― The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
― The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”
― Ulysses
― Ulysses

“Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.”
― Collected Poems in English and French
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.”
― Collected Poems in English and French

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
― A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
― A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
― Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
― Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
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