18 Quotes by Vernon Lee

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.

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.

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

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