Remarks by William Bell Scott | V2Melody Quotations

“We become more self-centred as we get old, and our environment, the scenery of life, becomes more important.”

Observing how ageing can deepen inwardness and attachment to surroundings · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XIX

“Town is the theatre for activity in relation to the actual world, solitude in the country creates reflection, the luxury or the pain of life.”

Contrasting urban action with the reflective intensity of rural solitude · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XIX

“It was as if I had awoke into another world beyond the pulsation of the senses, a state of things that would last for ever.”

Describing profound stillness as an experience outside ordinary sensory life · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XIX

“Religion gives us ideals; science gives us command; morals give us justice; arts, beauty; medicine preserves and improves the body; civil law defends us against ourselves.”

Summarising the distinct roles of faith, knowledge, ethics, art and social order · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XIV

“Writing, without something urgently requiring to be said, ends in imitation, restoration, selection.”

Arguing that genuine writing begins with something that demands expression · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XII

Art
Truth

“The more knowing the aspirant is, the more imitative he is, and the less he depends on original powers, invention, and knowledge of life.”

Warning that excessive literary knowingness can weaken originality · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XII

Art
Truth

“Poetry without this absolutely critical sincerity and truth may be beautiful, but its beauty is to me not charming but offensive.”

Rejecting poetic beauty when it is detached from sincerity and truth · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter IX

“In my estimate of the poet's true mission in this world, I hold that whatever he says should be the vital truth in relation to the thing mentioned, man or fact in story or nature.”

Making fidelity to essential truth central to the poet's calling · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter IX

“I have always found original genius of a concentrated and peculiar kind the most dangerous endowment.”

Treating intense originality as a gift that can also imperil balance · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter I

Art
Truth

“I have found my greatest happiness in thinking rightly, rather than in acting successfully.”

Placing sound judgement above outward success as a source of happiness · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter XXIV

Joy
Truth

“We often say in the battle of life as in the game of chess—Had I only played this, and not that!”

Comparing regret over past choices to replaying a game whose later moves would also change · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter XXIV

Memory
Time

“The only desirable and vital workmanship is that which honestly and directly expresses our own conceptions and observations.”

Defining worthwhile art as honest expression of personal perception · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter XXIII

Art
Truth

“A simple experience expressed without affectation resembles some of Wordsworth's more familiar pictures, and becomes valuable, like a voice from Nature herself.”

Valuing unaffected expression for its closeness to lived experience and nature · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter XIX

“A perfect understanding and sympathy with a single friend of twenty years' standing is something more not less than solitude.”

Presenting deep friendship as compatible with, and richer than, solitude · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XIX

“A hard and precarious life creates noble natures.”

Suggesting that hardship can foster strength and nobility of character · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter XVII

Hope
Truth

“Indeed the great poet must be a great thinker, the noble poet must have a noble nature.”

Joining poetic greatness to depth of thought and character · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

“Sympathies even change, so that any friendships save those founded on common sense and moderate affinities of taste come at last to be numbered among the delusions and compromises of life.”

Observing how changing sympathies test friendships over time · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

“For myself, one absorbing and all-sacrificing passion of friendship has followed another through my life.”

Describing friendship as one of the strongest recurring passions of his life · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

“Friendship is altogether different. It comes later, it has nothing to do with the colour of the hair or the shape of the nose.”

Distinguishing mature friendship from instinctive or superficial attraction · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

“These little white clouds rise and set when the sky of childhood is blue and calm.”

Using a gentle natural image for the fleeting attachments of childhood · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter VIII

“The Bible was to him an inexhaustible treasure, inspiring equally awe and delight.”

Recalling the imaginative and emotional power of scripture in childhood · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter V

“These childish difficulties are in no way different from the mental difficulties of later life.”

Connecting childhood perplexity with the enduring questions of adulthood · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter III

“The mystery underlying all nature is around us everywhere every moment of life.”

Finding mystery not in rare events but in ordinary existence · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter III

Nature
Truth

“I was apart from these and from everything else; I was naked, as it were, and alone in an antagonistic creation, accountable to myself only for preservation and well-being.”

Recalling an early awakening to individuality and isolation · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. I, Chapter III

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