Edwin Muir Quotes & Sayings

Dostoyevsky wrote of the unconscious as if it were conscious; that is in reality the reason why his characters seem 'pathological', while they are only visualized more clearly than any other figures in imaginative literature ... He was in the rank in which we set Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. — Edwin Muir

Kindness and courage can repair time's faults, And serving him breeds patience and courtesy In us, light sojourners and passing subjects. — Edwin Muir

I have observed in foolish awe
The dateless mid-days of the law
And seen indifferent justice done
By everyone on everyone. — Edwin Muir

The only thing which can tell us about the novel is the novel. — Edwin Muir

We meet ourselves at every turn In the long country of the past. — Edwin Muir

The ancestral deed is thought and done,
And in a million Edens fall
A million Adams drowned in darkness,
For small is great and great is small,
And a blind seed all. — Edwin Muir

Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness. — Edwin Muir

See him, the gentle Bible beast, / With lacquered hoofs and curling mane, / His wondering journey from the East / Half done, between the rock and plain. — Edwin Muir

The life of every man is an endlessly repeated performance of the life of man. — Edwin Muir

The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind. — Edwin Muir

There is a road that turning always Cuts off the country of Again. Archers stand there on every side And as it runstime's deer is slain, And lies where it has lain. — Edwin Muir

Packed in my skin from head to toe is one I know and do not know. — Edwin Muir

And without fear the lawless roads Ran wrong through all the land. — Edwin Muir

Light and praise,
Love and atonement, harmony and peace.
Touch me, assail me, break and make my heart. — Edwin Muir