“Language most shows a man: speak, that I may see thee.”

Linking speech with character and moral identity · Discoveries (Timber)

• Art
• Truth

“Should history tell of good men, the attentive listener is incited to imitate what is good.”

Presenting history as a practical guide to virtuous living · Preface to Ecclesiastical History of the English People

• Art
• Truth

“The supreme aim of art is to make us feel more intensely the beauty of life.”

The wording is widely circulated under Symons’s name, but the primary source is difficult to verify · Essay, commonly attributed

• Art
• Beauty
• Joy

“The Decadent movement, then, is a movement towards a more subtle, a more curious, a more refined art.”

Presenting decadence as an intensification of artistic refinement · Essay, The Decadent Movement in Literature

• Art
• Beauty

“Symbolism, in literature, is the expression of the unseen by means of the visible.”

Defining art as a passage from visible forms to inward realities · Essay, The Symbolist Movement in Literature

• Art
• Truth

“The arts are the only way to escape the world without leaving it.”

Describing art as a form of transcendence that remains rooted in lived experience · Conversation / interview

• Art
• Solitude

“A world ends when its metaphor has died.”

Suggesting that cultures lose their vitality when their central imaginative symbols cease to live · Essay

• Art
• Truth

“I shall omit, for brevity, the many adventures that befell him in his youth.”

A glimpse of the narrator’s deliberate control over the story · Narrative in Oroonoko

• Art
• Memory

“Nor shall my pen be frighted from its way, by any reflection on the subject of my writing.”

A resolute defence of writing freely about difficult subjects · Narrative in Oroonoko

• Art
• Truth

“I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader with the adventures of a feigned hero.”

A declaration of truthful witness rather than invented entertainment · Narrative preface in Oroonoko

• Art
• Truth

“La poesía es el diálogo del hombre, de un hombre con su tiempo.”

Defining poetry as a living exchange between an individual and an age · Juan de Mairena, prose reflection on poetry

• Art
• Poetry
• Time

“En cuestiones de cultura y de saber, sólo se pierde lo que se guarda; sólo se gana lo que se da.”

Presenting knowledge as something enriched by being shared · Juan de Mairena, prose aphorism

• Art
• Friendship
• Truth

“I would never be induced to write a story of the kind that I would not be willing to read myself.”

Expressing the importance of personal standards in choosing literary subjects · Preface to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

• Art
• Truth

“I would not be understood as asserting that the faults and follies of mankind are the proper subjects for ridicule.”

Distinguishing moral seriousness from the easy mockery of human weakness · Preface to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

• Art
• Truth

“Even if he fail in this, he has done something, if he has afforded a healthy and rational amusement.”

Defending literature that offers wholesome pleasure as well as instruction · Preface to Agnes Grey

• Art
• Joy

“To impart truth, however, is the aim of every good writer.”

Defining truthful representation as the central responsibility of authorship · Preface to Agnes Grey

• Art
• Truth

“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find.”

Suggesting that even difficult narratives can contain moral or practical insight · Preface to Agnes Grey

• Art
• Truth

“The cultivation of the imagination is the great object of education.”

Emphasising imaginative development as a central purpose of learning · Essay on education, commonly attributed

• Art
• Childhood

“Poetry is the art of expressing the human soul in words.”

Emphasising poetry as an art of inward expression · Essay / critical prose

• Art
• Poetry

“La poésie est l'incarnation de la pensée humaine dans le langage humain.”

Presenting poetry as thought made fully tangible through language · Essay on the destinies of poetry

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“A great poem is a work of art, and not a sermon.”

Distinguishing imaginative creation from direct instruction · Essay / literary criticism

• Art
• Poetry

“The first duty of a poet is to be a poet, and not a moralist.”

Defending poetry's independence from moral preaching · Conversation / literary criticism

• Art
• Poetry

“There is no kind of literature which is more difficult to estimate than that which is known as lyrical poetry.”

Recognising the particular difficulty of judging lyric poetry · Essay / literary criticism

• Art
• Poetry

“A poet's business is presumably to write good poetry, and not to be a good man.”

Separating artistic achievement from moral reputation · Essay / literary criticism

• Art
• Poetry