Vernon Lee Quotations

There is too little courtship in the world.

The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading.

... there is no end to the deceits of the past ...

Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind. ... What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.

Art is the expression of a man's life, of his mode of being, of his relations with the universe, since it is, in fact, man's inarticulate answer to the universe's unspoken message.

things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging is a useful, rapid way of dispatching business, it does undoubtedly waste a great deal which is too good for wasting.

There is too little courtship in the world. ... For courtship means a wish to stand well in the other person's eyes, and, what is more, a readiness to be pleased with the other's ways; a sense on each side of having had the better of the bargain; an undercurrent of surprise and thankfulness at one's good luck.

Some persons' letters seem almost framed to afford a series of alibis for their personality ...

poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of the world we carry within us.

There is an unlucky tendency ... to allow every new invention to add to life's complications, and every new power to increase life's hustling; so that, unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead of the better.

As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking. ... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

Mankind may be divided into playgoers and not playgoers ...

A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness.

Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one.

What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.