Quotes from Alfred Austin

Some of the finest poetry ever written upon life is to be found surely in the Old Testament.

I daresay larks do not find much music in the thunder. But they have the sense to be silent when they hear the roll of that untrembling diapason that makes all things tremble.

Politics do not necessarily mean party politics, though in this country, at this moment, the one runs dangerously near to implying the other.

The bright incarnate spirit of the Morn.

No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.

There have been seasons in the history of the human race, melancholy seasons for the human mind, the "evil days" spoken of by Milton, when men of letters could not, with any self-respect, mix in politics. How much more highly we should think of Seneca if that literary Stoic had not been a minister of Nero.

It will scarcely be doubted, therefore, that there does exist a real and a very grave danger lest Poetry should, in these perplexing and despondent days, not only be closely associated with Pessimism, but should become for the most part its voice and echo.

Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a conspicuous degree.

It is for the best and highest interests of literature that those who love it before all other things, and cherish it beyond all other considerations, should nevertheless take a large and liberal view of what constitutes life.

If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose.

But no subject is equal to its own support, where the poet is concerned, however it may be with the preacher and the moralist. The poet himself must support it.

But if poetry is now comparatively little read, no one can deny that it is much written about.

Shakespeare was compounded of too many and too large elements to have been a poet only.

No doubt Plato's notion that poets should chant nothing but hymns to the Gods and praises of virtue is a little narrow and exacting, but if they are to sing songs worthy of themselves, and of mankind, they must be on the side of virtue and of the Gods.

Now the highest literature—and Poetry is confessedly the highest literature—is a transfiguring reflex of life; and in its magic mirror we perforce see reflected all the thoughts, feelings, interests, passions, and events of human existence.

That politicians pure and simple are becoming less imbued with the literary spirit is, I think, certain, and it is to be regretted, because polite Politics are almost as much to be desired as polite Literature.

Would not the proper conclusion, therefore—a conclusion not overstrained and if not stated with excessive dogmatism—seem to be, that literature, though demanding precedence in the affections, and exacting the chief attention of one who professes really to love it, is not a jealous mistress, but, on the contrary, is only too well pleased to see even its most attached votaries combine with their one supreme passion a number of minor interests and even minor affections.

There is no passion of the human heart, no speculation of the human mind, to which Shakespeare has not, in some passage or another, given expressive utterance.

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.

Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.

Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.

Where has thou been all the dumb winter days When neither sunlight was nor smile of flowers, Neither life, nor love, nor frolic, Only expanse melancholic, With never a note of thy exhilarating lays?

Tears are the summer showers to the soul.

He is dead already who doth not feel Life is worth living still.