“We usually fit our judgments not to the truth of things nor even to our own impressions of things, true or false, but to the standard of convention.”

Warning that social convention can replace independent judgement · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Convention
• Independence
• Truth

“The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is.”

Turning a familiar proverb upside down by considering events from the worm's perspective · Essay, On Early Rising, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Convention
• Humour
• Wit

“There is absolutely no must in things except the Must of being born and dying.”

Advice against becoming a slave to custom and appearances · Letter to Helen Coleman, 27 March 1913

• Convention
• Freedom
• Life

“At my age, and believing as I do that the battle of my life is over, I decline to put on any of the convenient cloaks and masks which convention has at our disposal whenever we need them.”

Rejecting socially convenient disguises in favour of candour late in life · The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1929

• Age
• Convention
• Sincerity

“Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.”

A historically revealing statement of the gender conventions surrounding literary ambition in his period · Letter to Charlotte Brontë, 12 March 1837

• Convention
• Literature
• Society

“But the really great writer is not bound by the conventions of his day, nor, if he desires to give his reader a happy ending, need he select a wastrel like Jones as the recipient of his too easily bestowed favours.”

Great writers need not surrender their artistic judgement to contemporary convention · The English Novel

• Art
• Convention
• Writing

“I am no purist, nor can I understand how anyone can amuse themselves with that.”

Original: No me pago de purista, ni comprendo cómo hay quien se entretiene en eso. — Rejecting linguistic purity when it obstructs living expression · Preface, La guerra literaria (Spanish)

• Convention
• Language
• Style

“Whitman fought for the modern point of view which has discarded chastity as the perverted ideal of Asiatic mysticism.”

Shows Masters's admiration for Whitman's challenge to inherited conventions surrounding the body and sexuality · Whitman

• Body
• Convention
• Freedom

“I always thought the fringe had the best of it. I don't think I mind not being woven in.”

A witty defence of independence from conventional expectations · Conversation, 1910

• Convention
• Independence
• Wit

“The conception of what it is that constitutes the lyric scope has, if anything, petrified.”

Criticising the narrow conventions that had come to limit lyric poetry · Essay, Narrative Poetry and the Vestigial Lyric, Scepticisms (1919)

• Art
• Convention
• Poetry

“Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.”

Mocking the disproportionate importance society can give to fashion · Letter to Cassandra Austen, 27 October 1798

• Convention
• Happiness
• Humour

“I don't think I should have been a respectable lady if I'd lived in them days. I'd have gone off with anyone who looked like that. Daphne was a fool.”

Playful revolt against respectability after quoting Swinburne on Apollo · Letter to Helen Coleman, 4 August 1910

• Convention
• Desire
• Rebellion

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

Encouraging independence and originality against convention · Conversation / anecdote (commonly attributed)

• Convention
• Originality
• Writing

“Tennyson was too conventional for my taste and nearly always spoiled his work with a prologue or an epilogue full of loud bombast or conceit.”

A strikingly forthright judgement on one of the major Victorian poets · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

• Convention
• Criticism
• Style

“To me, the trying part is being a woman at all. I've come to the ultimate conclusion that I'm a misfit of the worst kind, in spite of a superficial femininity.”

Frustration at the clash between daring mind, greed for experience, and convention · Letter to Helen Coleman, 29 December 1919

• Convention
• Identity
• Women

“Language expands when the imagination refuses to be bounded by convention.”

Original: تتسع اللغة عندما يرفض الخيال أن تحده التقاليد — A defense of poetic innovation and freedom · Literary reflection (Arabic)

• Convention
• Imagination
• Language

“As a model of what may and may not properly be said or written on any subject, Shakespeare will always be good enough for me.”

Invoking Shakespeare as his standard against restrictive literary convention · The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1929

• Convention
• Literature
• Writing

“As you observed, the more mystery the better: and still the balance is in favour of the 'Lords of the Creation.”

Reflecting on anonymity and the assumptions surrounding female authorship · Letter to a Ravelstone acquaintance, during the Scottish Minstrel period

• Convention
• Society
• Writing

“Sincerity, as a primal quality, holds, in general, a lower place than might be expected among the essential characteristics that form the standard of the average group.”

Notes how schools prize manner over candour · Book, Some Contemporary Poets, 1920

• Convention
• Poets
• Sincerity

“In the end one is too much a creature of nerves to possess the soldierly virtues which popular convention takes for granted and which perhaps really do exist.”

Original: Schließlich ist man doch zu sehr Nervenmensch um die Soldatentugenden zu besitzen, die der populären Convention als selbstverständlich gelten und die es vielleicht auch einmal da gibt. — A deeply personal rejection of conventional expectations of military heroism · Letter to Thea Sternheim from the front, early October 1914 (German)

• Character
• Convention
• War

“The natural is boring.”

Original: Le naturel est ennuyeux. — A deliberately provocative challenge to the common assumption that naturalness is automatically desirable. · Mauvaises pensées et autres (French)

• Art
• Convention
• Style

“An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at mid-day.”

Teasing poets for celebrating dawn more enthusiastically in verse than in their daily habits · Essay, On Early Rising, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Convention
• Humour
• Poetry

“After Racine, the game grew stale. It lasted two thousand years.”

Original: Après Racine, le jeu moisit. Il a duré deux mille ans! — His deliberately provocative judgement expresses impatience with inherited poetic conventions. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Convention
• Criticism
• Poetry

“If dialect is missed in this collection, it is enough to state that the day of dialect as far as Negro poets are concerned is in the decline.”

Treats literary dialect as a fading, often artificial medium rather than a required racial stamp · Foreword, Caroling Dusk, 1927

• Convention
• Language
• Poetry