Joseph Collins

“ He trusts his own fellow citizen least of all. He says he trusts him, but when he puts him in a position of trust he puts somebody in to watch him and to report on him. The Italian has not that confidence in his fellow human beings that a normal man has in his honest wife, that a normal mother has in her dutiful child, that a normal lover has in his trusted innamorata. I am so prejudiced in the Italian's favor that I must defend even his infirmities. For centuries Italy was divided and weak, and countless times she has been the tool of the ambitious, the insatiate, and the predatory. ”

“ This is the judgment of a mind, not of a heart; the judgment of a critic, not of a psychologist; the judgment of one who believes that years bring in their trend qualities and characteristics that do not exist in the embryo of maturity. A woman need not be of mother-age to be maternal any more than a pianist need be able to play Russian music at first sight to be an artist. The maternal instinct, when it exists, is revealed in childhood, and a love like that which united John Keats to Fanny Brawne, should have been the spark which caused her love to blaze. ”

“ If Petronius was a good man, if he loved his fellow men, and if he did all that was within his power to do to make them better men, more capacious for a full life here and more worthy of eternal life, why should they not allow him to enjoy his reward in the bosom of the Lord? How can they enhance his happiness, what does mankind gain by taking the semblance of that which once formed a framework for his spirit and transferring it from one vessel to another while mumbling or chanting over it? ”

“ Augustine with the same critical coldness of judgment that is brought to bear upon ordinary works of art or literature would be impossible. It stands alone among all the personal Biographies that have ever been written. It speaks to us, not like the ordinary narrative of a man’s life, but like a deep cry of agony; which, once heard, resounds for ever in our ears, imparting its own pathos to all music that we hear, and confusing our utterance when we would express the meaning that it wakens in our soul. ”

“ In reality, he is but one of many who are proclaiming those tidings in Italy.
The distinction between what he would like to be and what he thinks he is, is not so marked as in more timid and less articulate souls. Substantially, it is this same calling of prophecy which is his aim. As for the man he is, time and his own accomplishments alone will show. Now, at the zenith of his creative power, he is still a man of promise, a carrier-pigeon freighted with an important message who, instead of delivering it, exhausts himself beating his wings in a luminous void. ”

“ To have had a happy home in which unselfishness reigned, parents whose self-sacrifice remains a blessed memory, brothers and sisters helpful far beyond the usual measure—all these make a picture delightful to look back upon. Then to have had the benediction of friendship follow one like a shadow, to have always had the sense of comradeship in work, without the petty pinpricks of jealousies and controversies, to be able to rehearse in the sessions of sweet, silent thought the experiences of long years without a single bitter memory—to have and to do all this fills the heart with gratitude. ”

“ I marvel how men in public life stand banquets, especially Italians, who take to them like babes to mothers' milk. I fancy they often long for a succulent chop and a baked potato, with a tray for mahogany and a book for company! But the banchetto gives them an alluring arena for oratory, and my deliberate conviction is that the Italian has more pleasure in speaking than in any other voluntary act. ”

“ When she prolongs her civility with people she holds in small esteem, redouble your admiration: she is in torture. Vain at first by nature, her vanity has become boundless; knowledge and scorn of mankind soon perfected that quality. Yet, this vanity is excessive even to her own taste. She already thinks that fame is worth nothing at the cost of happiness, and yet she would make many an effort for fame.
“Would you like to know if Zélide is beautiful, or pretty, or merely passable? I can not tell; it all depends on whether one loves her, or on whether she wishes to make herself be loved. ”

“ In this state of mock humility he wrote: "I always feel above me the presence of the sacrifice of Christ. I see now that the glory of my life is not in the beauty of my possessions. I have never felt so miserable and at the same time so powerful. Never since I lived have I had within me an instinct, a need so deep and so storming. I am aware that a part of my being, maybe the best part, is deeply asleep within me." ”

“ If a life is worth writing at all, no consideration of personal feeling or convention should deter the writer from setting down the facts; for on them truth, the greatest quality of art, is founded. Marie’s Journal is a work of art in the full sense of the word; it reveals a soul and a personality, it shows the extraordinary gift of its youthful author for writing, painting and music, but it also shows the disequilibrium of an imagination untutored and untrained. ”

“ The play to which he owed his first success, "A Game of Chess," had a remarkable career in Italy, and it still makes leading appeal to extravagant youth and romantic maturity, who see, in the lovely Iolande or in the dashing Fernando, prototypes who solve perplexing problems of life with an ease and readiness that is soul-satisfying. They also see in their experiences the smouldering or dying embers of their own passions, whose articulate breathings cause them to glow consumingly and pleasantly. ”

“ Should Gerald Chapman have opportunity to publish his autobiography before he is hanged, we shall have a document rivalling in interest the greatest biographies of the past, for he would probably be able to display the sincerity of Jean-Jacques, the honesty of Benvenuto Cellini and the frankness of Dick Turpin. There seems to be no escape from the deluge, and it is probable that no escape should be wished for. There is no harm in writing one’s biography; it is the subject that one knows best and about which one is supposed to know more than any one else. ”

“ The purpose of fiction may be manifold, but it is read chiefly for distraction and diversion. The critic and interpreter read it to get the temper of the public mind and the trend of its projection, but the purchaser of it reads it to get surcease of the woes of life, whether they be the ruts worn by operating the daily treadmill or the despondencies thrust upon him by circumstances more inexorable than the tigers of Hyrcania. It is not likely that the occurrences in the life of another commonplace individual even though they are pieced with fiction will suffice to provide this. ”

“ A man of Berlioz’s temperament should not be judged according to any standard but his own; his soul was too sensitive to radiate happiness; his genius was of too fine a nature to leave place in him for self-appreciation and optimism; his tempers revealed his weariness of life and the extent to which life had conquered him; or rather they would in any one but Berlioz whose personality could suffer no comparison. ”

“ In the ecstasy of discovery he cannot resist smashing the idol of yesterday that his pedestal may be free for the more worthy one of to-day, and he cannot inhibit the impulse to rush off to the composing-rooms of La Voce to register his emotions in print.
In his desire to be famous he reminds one of those individuals who would be liked by every one, and who will do anything save cease making the effort. Pretending that he loves to have people hate him, he does not, but he would rather have hate and disparagement than indifference or neglect. ”

“ Like this school the self-styled futuristic writers of Italy revolt against rhetoric and against tradition. Therefore they reject equally the ardent classicism of Carducci and D'Annunzio's decadent blend of idealism and realism, the crass, slavish Gallicism of Brocchi, the Scandinavian genuflections of Bracco and the Shavian imitations of Pirandello. In protest against all these they seek the full liberty of the written word, as the evangel of socialism seeks the liberty of the individual. ”

“ He sought the ideal with the same ardour as man seeks the pleasure of the senses. He was a thinker, not a sensualist; a poet not a priest; a Pagan not a Christian; a genius not well poised who blazed the way for Burroughs and Muir and scores of others who have opened our eyes to the beauty of nature and have shown us how to appreciate and profit by familiarity with it. Personality defects fortunately do not long outlive the body. We quickly forget, when those we love are no longer with us, the things that annoyed us and we remember only their virtues. ”

“ The road over which we must travel is bordered on either side by seductive pastures from which gush life-giving springs, topped with luxurious trees of soul-satisfying color that protect from the blazing sun or the congealing wind, and on either side are pathways so softly cushioned that even the most tender feet may tread them without fear of wound or blister. The sign-posts to this road are the four little volumes written two thousand years ago. ”

“ To blow the breath of life into the nostrils of a statue as Aphrodite did in answer to Pygmalion’s prayer is a remarkable achievement, but to lay bare the human soul so that he who walks leisurely may read, compares favourably with it. When a biographer studies a character in real life, or when a man writes his own life, he has opportunity, by masterful handling of the theme, to push into the darkness characters that have been built by the fancy of the novelist, and to make them appear by contrast lifeless and stilted ”

“ Shall we be willing to submit to the restrictions that are put upon us by law and covenant concerning marriage and its entailments? Shall we bow down to autocratic governments whose rulers claim, and apparently have their claims allowed, to have divine guidance? Shall we be content with the concentration of property or of private capitalistic enterprise? Shall we be callous enough to see countless thousands of God's own, the poor, deprived of the advantages of food and clothing, education and the gifts of hygiene—in brief, of everything that makes life worth living? ”

“ The physical, intellectual and spiritual elements each in turn dominated his personality. The purpose of his life was to bring this trinity of forces into harmony and by so doing discover a new and deeper unity in the Universe itself. It is Mr. Fausset’s belief that he did not succeed in this purpose but the tortured history of such a genius lays bare the potentialities of humanity and of civilisation. His life was one long battle with death: the death of physical grossness and mental conceit, of worldly ambition and spiritual complacence. ”

“ To get the confidence of an individual or a country you must trust them, and the more implicitly you trust the greater will be the confidence and the finer the quality. Every one knows that Italy's alliance with Austria was an unnatural one and the majority of her people have always believed that the issue of it would be disastrous. Even the most shallow student of history knows that Austria stood menacingly over Italy during the entire period of the unholy alliance, but never more insultingly so than in 1912, when she veritably defended Turkey, while Italy was at war with that country. ”