18 Quotes by Vernon Lee


  • Author Vernon Lee
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    The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading.

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  • Author Vernon Lee
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    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.

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  • Author Vernon Lee
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    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.

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  • Author Vernon Lee
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    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.

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  • Author Vernon Lee
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    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.

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

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  • Author Vernon Lee
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    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.

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