Irish essayist (1879-1949)
Chekhov will seek out the key situation in the life of a cabman or a charwoman, and make them glow for a brief moment in the tender light of his sympathy.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Tchehov: The Perfect Story-teller", Old and New Masters
Mystery lies over the sea. Every ship is bound for Thule.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"The Herring Fleet", The Pleasure of Ignorance
Jane Austen has often been praised as a natural historian. She is a naturalist among tame animals. She does not study men (as Dostoevsky does) in his wild state before he has been domesticated. Her men and women are essentially men and women of the fireside.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Jane Austen: Natural Historian", Old and New Masters
Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems ... reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Keats", Old and New Masters
With Wordsworth, indeed, the light of revelation did not fall upon human beings so unbrokenly as upon the face of the earth. He knew the birds of the countryside better than the old men, and the flowers far better than the children.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Wordsworth", Old and New Masters
The lovers of beauty must unite in a league, and carry out some great propagandist work through the country. They must demand the extermination of the bulldog and the dismantling of the cheap villa, both of which are responsible for a deal of our contentment amid ugliness.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
The last spectacle of which Christian men are likely to grow tired is a harbour. Centuries hence there may be jumping-off places for the stars, and our children's children's and so forth children may regard a ship as a creeping thing scarcely more adventurous than a worm. Meanwhile, every harbour gives us a sense of being in touch, if not with the ends of the universe, with the ends of the earth.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"The Herring Fleet", The Pleasure of Ignorance
It makes all the difference whether you hear an insect in the bedroom or in the garden. In the garden the voice of the insect soothes; in the bedroom it irritates. In the garden it is the hum of spring; in the bedroom it seems to belong to the same school of music as the buzz of the dentist's drill or the saw-mill.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"The Hum of Insects", The Pleasure of Ignorance
Mr. Shaw came for a short time recently to be regarded less as an author than as an incident in the European War. In the opinion of many people it seemed as if the Allies were fighting against a combination composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Mr. Shaw.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Mr. Bernard Shaw", Old and New Masters
We cannot get happiness by striving after it, and yet with an effort we can impart it.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
Dostoevsky's visible world was a world of sensationalism. He may in the last analysis be a great mystic or a great psychologist; but he almost always reveals his genius on a stage crowded with people who behave like the men and women one reads about in the police news.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Dostoevsky the Sensationalist", Old and New Masters
When one has praised Turgenev, however, for the beauty of his character and the beautiful truth of his art, one remembers that he, too, was human and therefore less than perfect. His chief failing was, perhaps, that of all the great artists, he was the most lacking in exuberance. That is why he began to be scorned in a world which rated exuberance higher than beauty or love or pity.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Turgenev", Old and New Masters
No man is uninteresting when his hat is blown off and he has to scuttle after it down the street.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Tchehov: The Perfect Story-teller", Old and New Masters
The mirror that Strindberg held up to Nature was a cracked one. It was cracked in a double sense -- it was crazy. It gave back broken images of a world which it made look like the chaos of a lunatic dream.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"The Madness of Strindberg", Old and New Masters
There are travelers who fear to own delicate hands more than to meet a lion, and soldiers who would rather lose a limb than gain a beautiful nose by artificial methods.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
Irish & English: Portraits and Impressions
W. B. Yeats has created, if not a new world, a new star. He is not a reporter of life as it is, to the extent that Shakespeare or Browning is. One is not quite certain that his kingdom is of the green earth. He is like a man who has seen the earth not directly but in a crystal.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
"Mr. W. B. Yeats", Old and New Masters