Robert Wilson Lynd Quotes
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The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.
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Most human beings are quite likable if you don't see too much of them.
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Keats, it must be remembered, was a sensualist. His poems ... reveal him as a man not altogether free from the vulgarities of sensualism, as well as one who was able to transmute it into perfect literature.
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A cat is only technically an animal, being divine.
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It is the custom when praising a Russian writer to do so at the expense of all other Russian writers.
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Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.
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This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure.
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When one has praised Turgenev, however, for the beauty of his character and the beautiful truth of his art, one remembers that he, too, was human and therefore less than perfect. His chief failing was, perhaps, that of all the great artists, he was the most lacking in exuberance. That is why he began to be scorned in a world which rated exuberance higher than beauty or love or pity.
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In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.
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We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.
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There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.