Alice Meynell quotes - page 2

Children have a fastidiousness that time is slow to cure. It is to be wondered, for example, whether if the elderly were half as hungry as children are they would yet find so many things at table to be detestable. (Alice Meynell)
Childhood is but change made gay and visible. View quote
Alice Meynell
Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk. View quote
Alice Meynell
Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them; it goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no wearinesss, it knows no bonds. View quote
Alice Meynell
There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a child's foot runs. View quote
Alice Meynell
With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have all but outsung the bell. The inarticulate bell has found too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature. View quote
Alice Meynell
I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry highwayman. View quote
Alice Meynell
O daisy mine, what will it be to look / From God's side even of such a simple thing? View quote
Alice Meynell
It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of man is so much to be desired. The leg is the best part of the figure and the best leg is the man s. Man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. View quote
Alice Meynell
She walks-the lady of my delight- A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She keeps them from the steep. View quote
Alice Meynell
Now, in our opinion, no author should be blamed for obscurity; nor should any pains be grudged in the effort to understand him, provided that he has done his best to be intelligible. Difficult thoughts are quite distinct from difficult words. Difficulty of thought is the very heart of poetry. (Alice Meynell)
There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon. View quote
Alice Meynell
Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn, Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers, And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers; A poet's face asleep in this grey morn. Now in the midst of the old world forlorn A mystic child is set in these still hours. I keep this time, even before the flowers, Sacred to all the young and the unborn. View quote
Alice Meynell
Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether. View quote
Alice Meynell
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press  And reach in further than you know,  And fills all these, and when you go, There's loneliness in loneliness. View quote
Alice Meynell
Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act of betrayal and of waste. View quote
Alice Meynell
There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting out of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much confidence. View quote
Alice Meynell
[T]he foot should have more of the acquaintance of earth, and know more of flowers, freshness, cool brooks, wild thyme, and salt sand than does anything else about us.[...] It is only the entirely unshod that have lively feet. View quote
Alice Meynell
She walks-the lady of my delight-  A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;  She guards them from the steep; She feeds them on the fragrant height,  And folds them in for sleep. View quote
Alice Meynell
[I]t would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit. View quote
Alice Meynell
 The travelling heart went free With endless streams; that strife was stopped; And down a thousand vales I dropped,  I flowed to Italy. (Alice Meynell)
Thou art like silence unperplexed,  A secret and a mystery Between one footfall and the next. View quote
Alice Meynell
In the case of the woman's figure it is the foot, with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. View quote
Alice Meynell
[R]ight language enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do. View quote
Alice Meynell
London visibly works at nothing but transformation. View quote
Alice Meynell