Vernon Lee Quotes & Sayings

There is no end to the deceits of the past ... — Vernon Lee

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. — Vernon Lee

The fact is, that having once seen Alice Oke in the reality, it was quite impossible to remember that one could have fancied her at all different: there was something so complete, so completely unlike every one else, in her personality, that she seemed always to have been present in one's consciousness, although present, perhaps, as an enigma. — 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. — Vernon Lee

There is too little courtship in the world. — Vernon Lee

Mankind may be divided into playgoers and not playgoers ... — Vernon Lee

The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading. — Vernon Lee

Things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging is a useful, rapid way of dispatching business, it does undoubtedly waste a great deal which is too good for wasting. — Vernon Lee

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. — Vernon Lee

A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. — Vernon Lee

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. — Vernon Lee

Some persons' letters seem almost framed to afford a series of alibis for their personality ... — Vernon Lee

Poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of the world we carry within us. — Vernon Lee

What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined. — Vernon Lee