19th-century Translator Quotes

Adam Mickiewicz

Prosper Mérimée

Valery Bryusov

Gustav Meyrink

Rafael Sabatini

Lord Alfred Douglas

William Wetmore Story

I am the Love that dare not speak its name.

Lord Alfred Douglas

I saw the desert, it grew upon me. There are times, when I have sorrows, that I hunger and thirst for it...

It is a mistake to suppose, with some philosophers of aesthetics, that art and poetry aim to deal with the general and the abstract. This misconception has been foisted upon us by mediaeval logic. Art and poetry deal with the concrete of nature, not with separate 'particulars,' for such rows do not exist.

Ernest Fenollosa

All my life I have preserved in the depths of my heart a live faith in my Creator, the Defender of the World, in His Sanctifying Grace and in the expiatory sacrifice of Christ our Saviour, but never have I agreed that true religion demands outward manifestations.

It is the narrow, hidden tracks that lead back to our lost homeland, what contains the solution to the last mysteries is not the ugly scar that life's rasp leaves on us, but the fine, almost invisible writing that is engraved on our body.

At the same time the Muslims are commanded to exercise self-restraint as much as possible. Force
is a dangerous weapon. It may have to be used for self-defense or self-preservation, but we must
always remember that self-restraint is pleasing in the eyes of Allah. Even when we are fighting, it
should be for a principle not out of passion.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali

Hast thou not seen?
All that is needful hath been
Granted in what he ordaineth.

Catherine Winkworth

I would willingly give Thucydides for some authentic memoirs by Aspasia or by a slave of Pericles.

Prosper Mérimée

The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood On dusty shelves, when held against the ear Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear The faint, far murmur of the breaking flood. We hear the sea. The Sea? It is the blood In our own veins, impetuous and near.

Eugene Lee-Hamilton

There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards, but because they are men.

Ludwig Lewisohn

I think our lives are surely but the dreams
Of spirits, dwelling in the distant spheres,
Who as we die, do one by one awake.

The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.

Margery Williams

Throughout my life, I have always found that events which seemed at the time disastrous ultimately developed into positive blessings.

Elisabeth Marbury

We can't forever be spending our lives paying for political follies that never gave us anything but always took from us, and I amcontent with the narrowest metes and bounds provided I have peace and quiet for work.

This is strength; this is peace; to feel, in entering on every day, that all its duties and trials have been committed to the Lord Jesus - that, come what may, He will use us for His own glory and our real good!

John Gibson Paton

From having once been a peaceful shepherd, [he] had become the terror of southern Italy. [...] The usual occupation of Crocco's band was robbery of the wealthy Italians of the vicinity, battles with the Italian troops, and the seizure and robbery of rich foreigners, for whose deliverance heavy ransoms were demanded. When a detachment of troops was sent against them, they showed considerable courage. As they knew the country well, with its hiding-places and points of vantage, it was not easy to capture them.
As the country moaned and cursed at it's weeping fate... The Devil himself tempted Italy to follow it's lure of rule and conquest but in the end he has disappeared leaving a weeping country to pick up the ashes.

Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

The round towers of the castles looked as if they were so firmly encrusted in the sky that, to get to their other side, one would have to hew out a passage through the celestial marble.

Your earthly body is after all nothing more than a dress and inside it is a finer dress, and you yourself are in this finer dress.

The life of every man is an endlessly repeated performance of the life of man.

The Kabbalah was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise.

Christian David Ginsburg

What is difficult to understand is that without conscious effort, nothing is possible. Conscious effort is related to higher nature. My lower nature cannot lead me to consciousness. It is blind. But when I wake up and I feel that I belong to a higher world, this is only part of conscious effort. I become truly conscious only when I open to all my possibilities, higher and lower. There is value only in conscious effort.

Jeanne de Salzmann

The shadows of twilight grow,
And the tiger's ancient fierceness
In my veins begins to flow.

William Wetmore Story

An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will reveal to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence in the arts of fiction and drama that life itself is little more than a series of coincidences.

Rafael Sabatini

Now my soul is incarnate in my country,
My body has swallowed her soul,
And I and my country are one.
My name is million, for I love and suffer for millions.

Adam Mickiewicz

Was he a sinner? Possibly. But could his class, the bourgeoisie, be condemned as a whole? The Church did not realize how secure he felt when it spoke to him of damnation. Would God send a whole class to hell, the class of the respectable? Who, then, would be in heaven? The common people? That would be hard to imagine!

Bernard Groethuysen