105 Quotes by John Cowper Powys

O it does fascinate me so, my new-old-new friend, to compare our lives. Of course I am really not an artist or a writer tho' I am a story-teller. I am a born orator and even now I long & long & long for The Platform as an old circus clown longs—or as we pretend he longs for the Ring! On the platform and there alone I am really myself & in my element & now I have been away from the platform for 20 years!

It did not take Lil-Umbra long with her fifteen-year-old legs and her slender figure to scamper down the quarter-of-a-mile avenue of over-arching elms that led due eastward from the Fortress of Roque, where she lived, to the ancient circle of Druidic stones that had come to be known as "Castrum Sanctum".

My dear Henry   I've just written to you over the air, but this will have to go by land & sea, never mind! Our peculiar link as two lost re-incarnated Atlanteans meeting again after escaping from the flood in opposite directions will not be broken either by air travel or land & sea travel!

To horses, dogs and cats, to birds in cages, to pigs in sties, to sheep in folds, to cattle in stalls—to them all he sang his song and danced his dance! When he was eating out-of-doors he would pay court to the nearest toad or frog or blind-worm. When he was sucking an orange before going to bed, he would make overtures to a spider.

I know now what the Grail is. It is the desire of the generations mingling like water with the Blood of Christ, and caught in a fragment of Substance that is beyond Matter! It is a little nucleus of Eternity, dropped somehow from the outer spaces upon one particular spot!

What was the use of having a father who could exorcise devils, who could give sleep to the tormented, if he could not heal his own child's wounded heart?

More delicately, more intricately fashioned than any grasses of the field, more subtle in texture than any seaweed of the sea, more thickly woven, and with a sort of intimate passionate patience, by the creative spirit within it, than any forest leaves or any lichen upon any tree trunk, this sacred moss of Somersetshire would remain as a perfectly satisfying symbol of life if all other vegetation were destroyed out of that country. There is a religious reticence in the nature of moss.

No refining of one’s taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one’s powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one’s sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person’s true education.

Love is always in the mood of believing in miracles.