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Now, in our opinion no author should be blamed for obscurity, nor should any pains be grudged in the effort to understand him, provided that he has done his best to be intelligible. Difficult thoughts are quite distinct from difficult words. Difficulty of thought is the very heart of poetry.

Alice Meynell

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Alice Meynell
Age: 75 †
Born: 1847
Born: September 22
Died: 1922
Died: November 27
Essayist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Barnes
England
Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell
Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson
Words
Provided
Pain
Author
Understand
Difficulty
Difficult
Poetry
Intelligible
Thought
Thoughts
Blamed
Best
Quite
Obscurity
Done
Opinion
Distinct
Heart
Effort
Pains

More quotes by Alice Meynell

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Let us turn to our own childhoods-no further-if we will renew our sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change.
Alice Meynell
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the feet should have more of the acquaintance of earth, and know more of flowers, freshness, cool brooks, wild thyme, and salt sand than does anything else about us. ... It is only the entirely unshod that have lively feet.
Alice Meynell
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... I am dark but fair, / Black but fair.
Alice Meynell
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The traveling heart went free / With endless streams that strife was stopped / And down a thousand vales I dropped, / I flowed to Italy.
Alice Meynell
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But, visiting Sea, your love doth press / And reach in further than you know, / And fills all these and, when you go, / There's loneliness in loneliness.
Alice Meynell
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No mirror keeps its glances.
Alice Meynell
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I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry highwayman.
Alice Meynell
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It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, when Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature.
Alice Meynell
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Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it but the celestial scenery journeys to them it goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no wearinesss, it knows no bonds.
Alice Meynell
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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.
Alice Meynell
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Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn, Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers, And folded winds no blossom in the bowers A poet's face asleep in this grey morn. Now in the midst of the old world forlorn A mystic child is set in these still hours. I keep this time, even before the flowers, Sacred to all the young and the unborn.
Alice Meynell
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for man, woman, and child the tender, irregular, sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. ... nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked foot.
Alice Meynell
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Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results we value it in the act.
Alice Meynell
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It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of man is so much to be desired. The leg is the best part of the figure and the best leg is the man s. Man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid.
Alice Meynell
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From the shaken tower A flock of bells take flight, And go with the hour.
Alice Meynell
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Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn, / Unseen, this colorless sky of folded showers, / And folded winds...
Alice Meynell
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There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much confidence.
Alice Meynell
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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.
Alice Meynell
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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.
Alice Meynell
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recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now but it will suffer again next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Alice Meynell