“There is no strength so strong as absolute goodness.” — Sydney Dobell | V2Melody

“There is no strength so strong as absolute goodness.”

Presenting goodness as the deepest and most durable form of strength · Notes enclosed with a letter, 6 November 1856

Faith
Truth

About Sydney Dobell

Sydney Dobell

5 April 1824–22 August 1874

Sydney Thompson Dobell was born on 5 April 1824 at Cranbrook in Kent, into a family whose circumstances placed him close to the commercial and dissenting middle-class culture of provincial England rather than to the aristocratic literary world. His father, Thomas Dobell, was a wine merchant, and the business of…

More by Sydney Dobell

Poems by Sydney Dobell

More remarks by Sydney Dobell

“It is not the excess, but the imperfection of love that ever makes it selfish.”

Suggesting that selfishness reveals incomplete rather than excessive love · Notes enclosed with a letter, 6 November 1856

Love
Truth

“The friends of those who write poetry do not sufficiently remember that poetry is the exuberance, the self-pressed wine, of the mind.”

Describing poetry as an intense distillation of mental and emotional life · Letter to Rev. J. B. Paton, April 1856

Art
Poetry

“The thing dearest to the people is usually the least valuable element in what they value.”

Questioning whether popularity reliably identifies what is most valuable in art · Letter to M., May 1856