Alice Meynell Quotes (1847-1922)

Author, Writer, Poet

About Alice Meynell

Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell (11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922) was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet.

Best Alice Meynell Quotes

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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Alice Meynell quotes.

“[N]o mirror keeps its glances.”
Alice Meynell
“Solitude is separate experience.”
Alice Meynell
“A wall is the safeguard of simplicity.”
Alice Meynell
“I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”
Alice Meynell
“Childhood is but change made gay and visible.”
Alice Meynell
“  I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.”
“London visibly works at nothing but transformation.”
“I make the whole world answer to my art.”
Alice Meynell
“Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos.”
Alice Meynell
“What else, indeed, should mediocrity be but widespread, anywhere?”
“Compassion in the highest degree is the divinest form of religion.”
Alice Meynell
“[R]ight language enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do.”
Alice Meynell
“[T]here is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be mortal.”
“[I]t is doubtful whether we may name any weak thing as typically spiritual.”
“Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the act.”
Alice Meynell
“From the shaken tower
A flock of bells take flight
And go with the hour.”
“There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon.”
“The worst of all reasons for continuing anything is that it is easily continuable.”
“O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God's side even of such a simple thing?”
“[I]t would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit.”
Alice Meynell
“I came from nothing; but from where
Come these undying thoughts I bear?
”
“Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.”
“Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a cloud.”
“The majority can tell ordinary truth, but they should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary.”
Alice Meynell
“[T]he sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell Quotes by Topic

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Alice Meynell on Children 4 quotes

“Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos.”
Alice Meynell
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Alice Meynell on Fairies 3 quotes

“It is for fear of the grown-up, or at least out of respect towards them, that a chapter must be given to fairies. If the children do not care very much for fairies, they must be made to care. "Who is to care if they do not? Who is to be properly childlike if they are not?"”
Alice Meynell
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Alice Meynell on Solitude

“Solitude is separate existence.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Art

“I make the whole world answer to my art.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Mediocrity

“What else, indeed, should mediocrity be but widespread, anywhere?”

Alice Meynell on Compassion

“Compassion in the highest degree is the divinest form of religion.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Religion

“Compassion in the highest degree is the divinest form of religion.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Spirituality

“It is doubtful whether we may name any weak thing as typically spiritual.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Laughter

“The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Affectation

“An English wit has well said that affectation displeases us because it has not too much, but too little, art.”

Alice Meynell on Anger

“Hamlet, being a little mad, feigned madness. It is when I am angry that I pretend to be angry, so as to present the truth in an obvious and intelligible form.”
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell on Sheep

“She walks — the lady of my delight — A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep. She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep.”
Alice Meynell

What Alice Meynell Said About Others

Discover personal opinions Alice Meynell shared regarding contemporaries.

Alice Meynell on Edward Gibbon

“Is it perhaps Gibbon with his Fall of Rome that so darkens the air of eight hundred years with a squalid dust-storm of demolition as to obscure our sight of the unquenched lights of the mind of man? Ruskin joins day to human day again.”
Alice Meynell

About Alice Meynell

Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson Meynell (11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922) was an English writer, editor, critic, and suffragist, now remembered mainly as a poet.
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