Vernon Lee Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness.

Vernon Lee
Things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging is a useful, rapid way of dispatching business, it does undoubtedly waste a great deal which is too good for wasting.

Vernon Lee
There is no end to the deceits of the past...

Vernon Lee
'tis the superfluity of one man which makes the poverty of the other.

Vernon Lee
Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so much a quality of time as a peculiar state of mind.... What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.

Vernon Lee
The greatest pleasures of reading consist in re-reading.

Vernon Lee
Some persons' letters seem almost framed to afford a series of alibis for their personality...

Vernon Lee
As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking.... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

Vernon Lee
Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians, who find it less trouble to provide a new, cheap, and shoddy thing than to get the full use and full pleasure out of a finely-made and carefully-chosen old one.

Vernon Lee