Arthur Quiller-Couch

British writer and literary critic (1863–1944)

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (21 November 186312 May 1944) was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Quotes

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  • O pastoral heart of England! like a psalm
    Of green days telling with a quiet beat.
    • Poem Ode upon Eckington Bridge, River Avon, in Poems and Ballads, 1896
  • Only the heel
    Of splendid steel
    Shall stand secure on sliding fate,
    When golden navies weep their freight.
  • I could not find the way to God;
    There were too many flaming suns
    For signposts, and the fearful road
    Led over wastes where millions
    Of tangled comets hissed and burned—
    I was bewildered and I turned.
  • All the old statues of Victory have wings: but Grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not move or be dislodged.
    • Armistice Day anniversary sermon (Cambridge, November 1923)
  • And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence.
  • I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.
  • The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite.
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