Top 15 Alfred Austin Quotes

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.

O'er the wires the electric message came,
"He is no better; he is much the same."

The most generous of critics, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry. But on a very thin thread of meaning poetry, or a very fair imitation of it, may be hung by the aid of musical sound.

Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal.

[N]o verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess.

[I]n all periods of transitional thought and belief the conscience suffers, since its old sanctions have been removed and none other have yet taken their place. It is undermined without being adequately propped up.

Women are more frequently charming than men, because they are less self-conscious.

[C]harm appertains to the essence of the person or thing endowed with it. It cannot be acquired, it cannot be got rid of, and its results are produced without effort, since the person who has it cannot help producing them.

Repress your antipathies, cultivate your sympathies.

People living and dead, things past and present, all are contributories to that diminutive stream, oneself; a reflection which is essentially consoling, since it associates one with the sum of things and prevents one from living in barren isolation.

Doth logic in the lily hide,
And where's the reason in the rose?

If Man makes Conscience, then being good
Is only being worldly wise,
And universal brotherhood
A comfortable compromise.

Where in the lily lurks the mind,
Where in the rose discern the soul? More mindless still, stream, pasture, lake;
The mountains yet more heartless seem. […] It is their silence that appals,
Their aspect motionless that awes,
When searching spirit vainly calls
On the effect to bare the Cause.

[W]henever one wants to cite something wise and true, one has to go either to the ancients or to the eighteenth century for it.

English maidens are, in certain respects, to Italian maidens as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine.