Arthur Quiller-Couch Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned—
I was bewildered and I turned.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
Essentially style resembles good manners. It comes of endeavoring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than yourself—of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetuate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
O pastoral heart of England! like a psalm
Of green days telling with a quiet beat.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
All the old statues of Victory have wings: but Grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not move or be dislodged.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve.

Arthur Quiller-Couch
Only the heel
Of splendid steel
Shall stand secure on sliding fate,
When golden navies weep their freight.

Arthur Quiller-Couch