Alice Meynell quotes

It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, when Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. (Alice Meynell)
The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have expressed all things ever since man was man. And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. It has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it receives the messages of the world. But expression is outward, and the eye has it not. There are no windows of the soul, there are only curtains. View quote
Alice Meynell
No mirror keeps its glances. View quote
Alice Meynell
Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the act. View quote
Alice Meynell
If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds. View quote
Alice Meynell
Solitude is separate experience. View quote
Alice Meynell
I came from nothing; but from where Come these undying thoughts I bear? View quote
Alice Meynell
The cloud controls the light.[...]It is the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground shine. View quote
Alice Meynell
The true color of life is the color of the body, the color of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest color of the unpublished blood. View quote
Alice Meynell
[W]hat is now and then attempted is perhaps "for art's sake." He that saveth his art shall lose it. View quote
Alice Meynell
Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind. (Alice Meynell)
The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter. View quote
Alice Meynell
Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name. View quote
Alice Meynell
A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back -- it is already so far. View quote
Alice Meynell
Let us turn to our own childhoods-no further-if we will renew our sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change. View quote
Alice Meynell
Compassion in the highest degree is the divinest form of religion. View quote
Alice Meynell
The mothers of all ages are those who have suffered because others suffered; for each of them, self is less sensitive than the sense of her child. Self is not locked up in the maternal heart, there to be cherished, as it is by the egoist, or to be crushed and silenced, as it is by the Saint. In the mother, self is not lost, but loses all its evil by the passionate personal love that distributes it among sons and daughters. Perfect self-less love would perhaps be distributed through the multitude, but a mother is not perfect: nature has so much use for her-separate, family use-that she cannot let her go free from irrational, indispensable partialities and limitings, even injustices, all serving the turn of the race. View quote
Alice Meynell
A sense of art mixes with our modern piety. We are apt to admire the evangelical reticence for its dignity,[...] we are apt to respect the Scripture narratives with their few intense details, their close events and their great omissions alike, for their simplicity, and-it is to be feared that our literature leads us so far-for their "effect." View quote
Alice Meynell
Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide, Like all created things, secrets from me, And stand a barrier to eternity. View quote
Alice Meynell
The pretty game of calling on the children of the audience of "Peter Pan" to declare their faith in fairies seemed to me disastrous-a game of men and women at the expense of children, a cumbersome frolic at best and an artificial, a tyrannous use of the adult sense of sentimental humour against the helpless. I could with better conscience use my superior physical strength upon them than exploit them for love of my own condescension. (And yet Sir J. Barrie has written the most adorable "pretending" story ever written about a child.)No, children love a fairy story not because they think it true, but because they think it untrue, and because it makes no fraudulent appeal to their excellent good sense. That sense they are delighted to put aside while they "pretend." That is their own word.[...] "Let's pretend," not "Let's believe." View quote
Alice Meynell
From the shaken tower A flock of bells take flight, And go with the hour. (Alice Meynell)
A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. View quote
Alice Meynell
O spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise / In the young children's eyes. / But I have learnt the years, and know the yet / Leaf-folded violet. View quote
Alice Meynell
Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a cloud. View quote
Alice Meynell
My day-mind can endure / Upright, in hope, all it must undergo. / But O, afraid, unsure, / My night-mind waking lies too low, too low. View quote
Alice Meynell