Voices of the Muses

“One man has got a purse, but another has got the money, and he who has neither has nothing; and nothing is even less than little; while, on the other hand, much is a great deal more than nothing, and nothing can come of nothing.”

“They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself.”

“I am well and lively and happy as ever, and as glad to travel. I made an excursion on the Mediterranean.”

“The stage is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the world, with the dull part left out: and, indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all the rest.”

“Thus I wandered, shooting or singing, careless where I might pass the night; sometimes hurrying, again stopping to investigate some ancient tomb, to listen silently to the distant bells of St Peter's, far away in the plain; interrupting my hunt for a flock of lapwing to jot down a note for a symphony, and, in short, enjoying to the full my absolute freedom.”

“Heaps of people don’t copy. Heaps of others do copy — for me, I set myself to it by chance, and I find that it teaches and above all sometimes consoles.”

“Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.”

“I should like to know the reason why indolence is so highly prized by very many young men, that neither by words nor blows will they suffer themselves to be roused from it.”

“The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”

“Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order.”

“men should combine these tendencies, and he who reposes should act and he who acts should take repose. Discuss the problem with Nature; she will tell you that she has created both day and night.”

“The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter — perfect in its bud as in its bloom — with no reason to explain its presence — no mission to fulfil — a joy to the artist — a delusion to the philanthropist — a puzzle to the botanist — an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.”