17 Quotes by Arthur Quiller-Couch

His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was justa man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But hisdiscourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neitherdisgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but onthe contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged tomore orderly, contented, hopeful lives.

we may prate of democracy, but actually, a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

If your language is confused, your intellect, if not your whole character, will almost certainly correspond.

I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse’s lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.

You can see the meaning of the statement that “Literature is a living art” most easily and clearly, perhaps, by contrasting Science and Art at their two extremes – say Pure Mathematics and Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with man’s thought and emotion about things.

O pastoral heart of England! like a psalm Of green days telling with a quiet beat.

We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another’s success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve.

Portraits of other great ones look down on you in your college halls; but while you are young and sit at the brief feast, what avails their serene gaze if it do not lift up your hearts and movingly persuade you to match your manhood to its inheritance?