Symons Quotes & Sayings

I would never want to take away the option of sex work from someone, but I would want to create more options so that everyone can make the decision whether they want to do sex work or they don't want to do sex work, and that people who do sex work can do it safely. — Emily Symons

The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man. — Arthur Symons

Art begins when a man wishes to immortalize the most vivid moment he has ever lived. — Arthur Symons

Congressman Upton insisted that he hadn't changed his position on environmental issues. But Jeremy Symons, then a senior vice president of the nonpartisan National Wildlife Federation, said that the transformation was "like night and day." He continued, "In the past the committee majority viewed the Clean Air Act as an effective way to protect the public. Now the committee treats the Clean Air Act and the EPA as if they are the enemy. Voters didn't ask for this pro-polluter agenda, but the Koch brothers spent their money well and their presence can be felt." At — Jane Mayer

The wind is rising on the sea,The windy white foam-dancers leap;And the sea moans uneasily,And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep. — Arthur Symons

I know the woman has no soul, I know The woman has no possibilities Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so. It is her flesh that I adore; I go Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss. I know she cannot love: it is not this My vanquished heart implores in overthrow. Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone, Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent Music, divinest human harmony; Her body now a silent instrument, That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me The strains I have but dreamed of, never known. — Arthur Symons

Everywhere sex is understood to be something females have that males want. — Donald Symons

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance. — Arthur Symons

I have laid sorrow to sleep;Love sleeps.She who oft made me weepNow weeps. — Arthur Symons

Hardly any one is able to see what is before him, just as it is in itself. He comes expecting one thing, he finds another thing, he sees through the veil of his preconception, he criticizes before he has apprehended, he condemns without allowing his instinct the chance of asserting itself. — Arthur Symons

I am certainly a devoted homosexual. Nobody could doubt my credentials. But I think, politically, we allowed this word gay to...It buggers up a nice word. It doesn't cover what we are. A lot of us are not very joyous. We have a hard life to live, against the current. Gay doesn't cover that - and worst of all, it labels us. They can dismiss you and put you off in a corner: "Oh, he's gay," and that's it. That's the end. You can no longer be central to what's going on. That's tragic....The world loses central contact with some of the most beautiful, sentient, sensitive and agitated, creative and emotional people in our society. The result is that a lot of people who operate centrally in our society can't let on that they're gay. It's tragic. It's very dangerous. — Scott Symons

God, like all highest things, Hides light in shade, And in the night his visitings To sleep and dreams are clearliest made. — Arthur Symons

There is not a dream which may not come true, if we have the energy which makes, or chooses, our own fate ... It is only the dreams of those light sleepers who dream faintly that do not come true. — Arthur Symons

I heard the sighing of the reedsAt noontide and at evening,And some old dream I had forgottenI seemed to be remembering. — Arthur Symons

The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth. — Arthur Symons

Murphy's Law; When someone says 'It's not the money, it's the principle,' nine times out of ten, it's the money. — Mitchell Symons

Michelangelo's cook was illiterate, so he drew her a shopping list--- which today is priceless. — Mitchell Symons

If you are willing to admit faults, you have one less fault to admit. — Mitchell Symons

Anthropologist Donald Symons is as amazed as we are at frequent attempts to argue that monogamous gibbons could serve as viable models for human sexuality, writing, Talk of why (or whether) humans pair bond like gibbons strikes me as belonging to the same realm of discourse as talk of why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. — Cacilda Jetha

A place has almost a shyness of a person with strangers; its secret is not to be surprised by too direct interrogation. — Arthur Symons

Oliver Cromwell banned kissing on Sundays---even for married couples---on pain of a prison sentence. — Mitchell Symons

Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move. — Arthur Symons

Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art. — Arthur Symons

To have loved, to have been made happy thus, / What better fate has life in store for us? — Arthur Symons

Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me. — Arthur Symons

All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices. — Arthur Symons

The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on. — Arthur Symons

He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue. — Arthur Symons

Love I never associated with the senses, it was not even passion that I wanted; it was a conscious, subtle, elaborate sensuality, which I knew not how to procure. — Arthur Symons

It is in their eyes that their magic resides. — Arthur Symons

I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood. Here between sea and sea in a fairy wood, I have found a delicate wave-green solitude. — Arthur Symons

The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone. — Arthur Symons

And I would have, now love is over, An end to all, an end: I cannot, having been your lover Stoop to become your friend! — Arthur Symons

Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire / Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire. — Arthur Symons

There are certain natures to whom work is nothing, the act of work everything. — Arthur Symons

The dead are happy, having no desire. I rise and fall, and rise and fall again, Something is in me, famishing for bread, Baffled and unappeasable as fire. — Arthur Symons

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover. — Arthur Symons

As perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain, So the thought of you, remaining Deeply folded in my brain, Will not leave me: all things leave me: You remain. — Arthur Symons

There would therefore have been all the more delight at the birth of the first son William within less than a year of Margaret's death, tinged with more than a little anxiety, in view of the fateful words hic incepit pestis, 'here began plague', in the burial part of the register three months later. Just how close this dread flea-borne disease was to the Shakespeares can be guaged from the fact that their Henley Street neighbour Roger Green lost four of his children and town clerk Richard Symons three. One estimate suggests that the town lost around two hundred, or about fifteen per cent, of its population during this single outbreak. It is a sobering thought how much the world could have lost at this time by one ill-chanced flea-bite. — Ian Wilson

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him. — Arthur Symons

You cannot understand what a person is saying unless you understand who they are arguing with. — Donald Symons

I have loved colours, and not flowers;Their motion, not the swallows wings;And wasted more than half my hoursWithout the comradeship of things. — Arthur Symons

The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world. — Arthur Symons

The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises, The earth renews its magical youth at a breath. — Arthur Symons

Criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch twig for the castigation of offenders. — Arthur Symons

Night, a more perfect day. — Arthur Symons

Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears. — Arthur Symons

My mother is a wonderful, eccentric lady who has no concept whatever of interior monologue. We'll be driving along in the car and she'll suddenly say, 'Ants don't like cucumbers, you know. And roaches don't like cinnamon. Do you want some cheese, Michael? Rembrandt was the Lord of the day.'
-Mike Myers — Mitchell Symons

The world waits to see in those who claim to follow Jesus a passion for the only One who matters. — Robbie Symons

Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses? How soft is this one, how subtle this is, How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is, As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice; How this one clings and how that uncloses From bud to flower in the way of roses. — Arthur Symons

After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him [as a career counselor] was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited
long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms
what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true 'calling. — Alain De Botton

My life is like a music-hall,Where, in the impotence of rage,Chained by enchantment to my stall,I see myself upon the stageDance to amuse a music-hall. — Arthur Symons

My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring. — Arthur Symons

But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves. — Arthur Symons

The sexually insatiable woman is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys, and the fears of men. — Donald Symons

I had had my dreams of Venice. But nothing that I had dreamed was as impossible as what I found. — Arthur Symons