“Passion is waste — takes away from a man's stability, his self-centralization: its action on general culture, aestheticism, philosophy, manysidedness, all that makes life endurable, is ruinous.”

A strikingly severe youthful judgement on passion and its power to disturb intellectual self-possession · Marginalia on Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, c. 1889

• Desire
• Emotion
• Thought

“He was in wonderful form, but has changed a good deal — he seems of much broader sympathies, much more human & simple. And his delight in the country, in walking, in the simplicities of life is enchanting.”

Dowson's warm observation of Oscar Wilde shortly after Wilde's release from prison · Letter to Conal O'Riordan, c. 10 June 1897

• Change
• Friendship
• Simplicity

“I suppose it is settled that we are to hold the Laurelship as a corporate office.”

Playfully imagining the Rhymers’ Club collectively assuming the laureateship · Letter to Victor Plarr, autumn 1892

• Fame
• Joy
• Poetry