ROBERT WILSON LYND QUOTES
Irish essayist (1879-1949)
Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Swinburne", Old and New Masters
There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"On Christmas", The Book of This and That
A boy in love is not mainly a calf but a poet.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Art of Letters
It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Little Angel: A Book of Essays
It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Searchlights and Nightingales
It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Tchehov: The Perfect Story-teller", Old and New Masters
Most of us can remember a time when a birthday -- especially if it was one's own -- brightened the world as if a second sun had risen.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Peal of Bells
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Searchlights and Nightingales
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Blue Lion and Other Essays
When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"The Importance of Bad Manners"
The happiness even of the naturalist depends in some measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Pleasure of Ignorance
It is as though each of us investigated and made his own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is regarded by most men as gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Pleasure of Ignorance
The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Pleasure of Ignorance
We welcome almost any break in the monotony of things, and a man has only to murder a series of wives in a new way to become known to millions of people who have never heard of Homer.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The New Statesman, October 22, 1921
The poet with hair down his shoulders, whom the streets call after on his way, is endued with a kind of daring that many a brave general might envy.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
Most human beings are quite likeable if you do not see too much of them.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Peal of Bells
The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Orange Tree: A Volume of Essays
On the whole, however, the critic is far less of a professional faultfinder than is sometimes imagined. He is first of all a virtue-finder, a singer of praise. He is not concerned with getting rid of dross except in so far as it hides the gold. In other words, the destructive side of criticism is purely a subsidiary affair. None of the best critics have been men of destructive minds. They are like gardeners whose business is more with the flowers than with the weeds.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Art of Letters
This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Pleasure of Ignorance