Symons Quotes

#1. What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Arthur Symons

#2. The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.

Arthur Symons

#3. Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art.

Arthur Symons

#4. Murphy's Law; When someone says 'It's not the money, it's the principle,' nine times out of ten, it's the money.

Mitchell Symons

#5. There is not a dream which may not come true, if we have the energy which makes, or chooses, our own fate ... It is only the dreams of those light sleepers who dream faintly that do not come true.

Arthur Symons

#6. Michelangelo's cook was illiterate, so he drew her a shopping list--- which today is priceless.

Mitchell Symons

#7. The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.

Arthur Symons

#8. You cannot understand what a person is saying unless you understand who they are arguing with.

Donald Symons

#9. Art begins when a man wishes to immortalize the most vivid moment he has ever lived.

Arthur Symons

#10. Oliver Cromwell banned kissing on Sundays---even for married couples---on pain of a prison sentence.

Mitchell Symons

#11. I had had my dreams of Venice. But nothing that I had dreamed was as impossible as what I found.

Arthur Symons

#12. Night, a more perfect day.

Arthur Symons

#13. The world waits to see in those who claim to follow Jesus a passion for the only One who matters.

Robbie Symons

#14. As perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me: all things leave me: You remain.

Arthur Symons

#15. A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

Arthur Symons

#16. The dead are happy, having no desire. I rise and fall, and rise and fall again, Something is in me, famishing for bread, Baffled and unappeasable as fire.

Arthur Symons

#17. If you are willing to admit faults, you have one less fault to admit.

Mitchell Symons

#18. The sexually insatiable woman is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys, and the fears of men.

Donald Symons

#19. There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything.

Arthur Symons

#20. My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.

Arthur Symons

#21. The wind is rising on the sea,The windy white foam-dancers leap;And the sea moans uneasily,And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep.

Arthur Symons

#22. And I would have, now love is over, An end to all, an end: I cannot, having been your lover Stoop to become your friend!

Arthur Symons

#23. I would never want to take away the option of sex work from someone, but I would want to create more options so that everyone can make the decision whether they want to do sex work or they don't want to do sex work, and that people who do sex work can do it safely.

Emily Symons

#24. The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises, The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.

Arthur Symons

#25. I have laid sorrow to sleep;Love sleeps.She who oft made me weepNow weeps.

Arthur Symons

#26. Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me.

Arthur Symons

#27. Everywhere sex is understood to be something females have that males want.

Donald Symons

#28. Hardly any one is able to see what is before him, just as it is in itself. He comes expecting one thing, he finds another thing, he sees through the veil of his preconception, he criticizes before he has apprehended, he condemns without allowing his instinct the chance of asserting itself.

Arthur Symons

#29. Love I never associated with the senses, it was not even passion that I wanted; it was a conscious, subtle, elaborate sensuality, which I knew not how to procure.

Arthur Symons

#30. Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire / Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.

Arthur Symons

#31. Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

Arthur Symons

#32. Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

Arthur Symons

#33. To have loved, to have been made happy thus, / What better fate has life in store for us?

Arthur Symons

#34. Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

Arthur Symons

#35. I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things.

Arthur Symons

#36. My life is like a music-hall,Where, in the impotence of rage,Chained by enchantment to my stall,I see myself upon the stageDance to amuse a music-hall.

Arthur Symons

#37. I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood. Here between sea and sea in a fairy wood, I have found a delicate wave-green solitude.

Arthur Symons

#38. But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves.

Arthur Symons

#39. He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.

Arthur Symons

#40. The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

Arthur Symons

#41. The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.

Arthur Symons

#42. The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.

Arthur Symons

#43. All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices.

Arthur Symons

#44. Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses.

Arthur Symons

#45. It is in their eyes that their magic resides.

Arthur Symons

#46. A place has almost a shyness of a person with strangers; its secret is not to be surprised by too direct interrogation.

Arthur Symons

#47. Criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch twig for the castigation of offenders.

Arthur Symons

#48. God, like all highest things, Hides light in shade, And in the night his visitings To sleep and dreams are clearliest made.

Arthur Symons

#49. I heard the sighing of the reedsAt noontide and at evening,And some old dream I had forgottenI seemed to be remembering.

Arthur Symons