Alfred Austin quotes - page 2

Friendship craves The commerce of the mind, not the exchange Of emulous feasts that foster sycophants. (Alfred Austin)
Why should you, Because the world is foolish, not be wise?
Alfred Austin
There is no office in this needful world But dignifies the doer if done well.
Alfred Austin
The Devil is an echo Of search unsatisfied.
Alfred Austin
Towns can be trusted to corrupt themselves.
Alfred Austin
'Tis a world Where all is bought, and nothing's worth the price.
Alfred Austin
Of all our feigned affections, there is none So hollow, selfish, and injurious, As what we christen Patriotism.
Alfred Austin
Who once believed will never wholly doubt.
Alfred Austin
Who once has doubted never quite believes.
Alfred Austin
Death is master of lord and clown. Close the coffin and hammer it down.
Alfred Austin
Let Will but set its appetite on war, And Reason will promptly invent offence, And furnish blood with arguments. (Alfred Austin)
Love and naughtiness are always in their teens.
Alfred Austin
[T]here is no gardening without humility, an assiduous willingness to learn, and a cheerful readiness to admit that you were mistaken. Nature is continually sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
Alfred Austin
Why from the plain truth should I shrink? In woods men feel; in towns they think. Yet, which is best? Thought, stumbling, plods Past fallen temples, vanished gods, Altars unincensed, fanes undecked, Eternal systems flown or wrecked; Through trackless centuries that grant To the poor trudge refreshment scant, Age after age, pants on to find A melting mirage of the mind. But feeling never wanders far, Content to fare with things that are.
Alfred Austin
The most generous of critics, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound.
Alfred Austin
[P]eople who canalise their lives and prearrange their enjoyments lose much of the enchantment which attends the guiding beneficence of chance.
Alfred Austin
Men preach Philosophy, women practise it.
Alfred Austin
One must be intoxicated by scenery, in order to appreciate it. Tranquil survey is not enough, and scrutinising curiosity is fatal.
Alfred Austin
If you are not something of a philosopher,-and by philosophy I understand a serene temper, and the maintaining of an equable mind under the sharpest disappointments,-I do not advise you to cultivate, or at any rate to grow enamoured of, a garden.
Alfred Austin
If Man makes Conscience, then being good Is only being worldly wise, And universal brotherhood A comfortable compromise.
Alfred Austin
Where in the lily lurks the mind, Where in the rose discern the soul?More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake; The mountains yet more heartless seem. [...]It is their silence that appals, Their aspect motionless that awes, When searching spirit vainly calls On the effect to bare the Cause. (Alfred Austin)
A little knowledge is said to be a dangerous thing, but it is not dangerous to the imagination. Knowledge is to the imagination what fuel is to flame. A little feeds it; a great deal extinguishes it.
Alfred Austin
People living and dead, things past and present, all are contributories to that diminutive stream, oneself; a reflection which is essentially consoling, since it associates one with the sum of things and prevents one from living in barren isolation.
Alfred Austin
So long as faith with freedom reigns And loyal hope survives, And gracious charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For intellect or will, And men are free to think and act, Life is worth living still.
Alfred Austin
Is life worth living? Yes, so long As there is wrong to right, Wail of the weak against the strong, Or tyranny to fight.
Alfred Austin