Arthur Christopher Benson

“ One might as truly, it seems, take upon oneself to deny that there was any such colour as red in the world, and tell people that whenever they saw or discerned any tinge of red, it was a delusion; one can only use one's faculty of perception; and if sorrow and suffering are a delusion, how do I know that love and joy are not delusions too? They must stand and fall together. The reason why I believe that joy and love will in the end triumph, is because I have, because we all have, an instinctive desire for them, and a no less instinctive fear and dread of pain and sorrow. ”

“ That is the joy of art, of the symbol—that it remains and rests within itself, in a world that seems, for a moment, more real and true than the clamorous and obtrusive world we move in.
It is so all along the line—the hard and soulless art of technique and rule, of tradition and precept, however accomplished, however perfect it is, is worth nothing; it is only another dreary form of labour, unless through some faculty of the spirit, some vital intensity, or even some inexplicable felicity, not comprehended, not designed, not intended by the artist, it has this remote and suggestive quality. ”

“ One cannot bear that one impression that seems so vivid and strange should be lost and perish. It is the artistic instinct, no doubt. And then one passes through the streets of a great city, and one becomes aware that of the thousands that pass one by, perhaps only one or two have the same instinct, and even they are bound to silence by circumstance, by lack of opportunity. The rest—life is enough for them; hunger and thirst, love and strife, hope and fear, that is their daily meat. And life, I doubt not, is what we are set to taste. ”

“ I seem to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; her love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles, she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust. ”

“ We are not strong enough to desire the cup of suffering, even though we may know that we must drink it before we can discern the truth. But we may rejoice with a deep-seated joy, in the dark hours, that the Hand of God is heavy upon us. When our vital energies flag, when what we thought were our effective powers languish and grow faint, then we may be glad because the Father is showing us His Will; and then our sorrow is a fruitful sorrow, and labours, as the swelling seed labours in the sombre earth to thrust her slender hands up to the sun and air. ”

“ It is, of course, that very hardness and inconclusiveness that makes one turn to fiction. In fiction, one can round off the corners, repair mistakes, comfort, idealise, smooth things down, make error and weakness bear good fruit, choose, develop as one pleases. Not so with life, where things go from bad to worse, misunderstandings grow and multiply, suffering does not purge, sorrow does not uplift. That is the worst of fiction, that it deludes one into thinking that one can deal gently with life, finish off the picture, arrange things on one's own little principles ”

“ It is a great happiness to meet such a person, because one goes in the strength of that heavenly meat many days and nights, knowing that life is worth living to the uttermost, and that it can all be beautiful and lofty and gracious; but the way to miss it, to lose that fine sense, is to have some dull and definite design of one's own, which makes one treat all the hours in which one cannot pursue it, but as the dirt and debris of a quarry. One must not, I see, wait for the golden moments of life, because there are no moments that are not golden, if one can but pierce into their essence. ”

“ It is the thought that makes us at moments believe intensely and urgently in the justice, the mercy, the perfect love of God, even at moments when everything round us appears to contradict the idea. It is the outcome of that strange right to happiness which we all feel, the instinct that makes us believe of pain and grief that they are abnormal, and will be, must be, set right and explained somewhere. The thought comes to me most poignantly at sunset, when trees and chimneys stand up dark against the fiery glow, and when the further landscape lies smiling, lapt in mist, on the verge of dreams ”

“ One cannot sympathise and yet one dare not condemn. One feels a horrible suspicion that there are dark and slimy corners, vile secrets, ugly memories, in the minds of hundreds of seemingly respectable people; the book brings one face to face with the mystery of evil; and yet through the gloom there steals a silvery radiance, a far-off hope, an infinite compassion for all weakness and imperfection. One can hardly love Rousseau, though one does not wonder that there were many found to do so; and instead of judging him, one cries out with horror at the slime of the pit where he lay bound. ”

“ An artist who creates a great character need not necessarily even desire to attain the great qualities which he discerns; he sees them, as he sees the vertebrae of the mountain ridge under pasture and woodland, as he sees the structure of the tree under its mist of green; but to see beauty is not necessarily to desire it; for, as in the mountain and the tree, it may have no ethical significance at all, only a symbolical meaning. The best art is inspired more by an intellectual force than by a vital sympathy. ”

“ A beautiful thing, full of patience and hope. What but that has taught me to learn to live for the moment, to take the bitter experiences of life as they come, not crushing out the sweetness and flinging the rind aside, but soberly, desirously, only eager to get from the moment what it is meant to bring. Even the very shrinking back from a bitter duty, the indolent rejection of the thought that touches one's elbow, bidding one again and again arise and go, means something; to defer one's pleasure, to break the languid dream, to take up the tiny task, what strength is there! ”

“ In the young men that went lightly in and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so interesting and wonderful; in the tired face of the old Professor, limping along the street; in the prosperous, comfortable contentment of robust men, full of little affairs and schemes—I saw in all of them the same hope, the same unity of purpose, the same significance; and we three in the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a great drama of life and love, in which even death could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope. ”

“ That is what such men as my miller do instinctively; meanwhile one tries to believe that the melancholy that comes to such as Hamlet, the sadness of finding the world unintelligible, and painful, and full of shadows, is a noble melancholy, a superior sort of madness. Yet one is not content to bear, to suffer, to wait; one clutches desperately at light and warmth and joy, and alas, in joy and sorrow alike, one is ever and insupportably alone. ”

“ What I dare to hope is that I may learn by slow degrees to set the happiness of others above my own. I will listen for any sound of grief or discontent, and I will try to quiet it. I will spend my time and strength as freely as I can. That is a far-off hope. One cannot in a moment break through the self-consideration of a lifetime. But whereas, before, my dim sense that happiness could not be found by deliberately searching for ease made me half rebellious, half uncomfortable, I know now that it is true, and I will turn my back if I can upon that lonely and unsatisfied quest. ”

“ Even my close and intimate companionship with Maud seems to have suffered, for I was like a child, bringing the little wonders that it finds by the hedgerow to be looked at by a loving eye. Maud is angelically tender, kind, sweet. She tells me only to wait; she draws me on to talk; she surrounds me with love and care. And in the midst of it all I sit, in dry misery, hating myself for my feebleness and cowardice, keeping as far as possible my pain to myself, brooding, feverishly straining, struggling hopelessly to recover the clue. The savour has gone out of life ”

“ The sadness which must shadow the path of such as myself, is the sadness which comes of the power to see clearly the imperfections of the world, coupled with the inability to see through it, to discern the purpose of it all. One comforts oneself by the dim hope that the desire will be satisfied and the dream fulfilled; but has one any certainty of that? The temptation is to acquiesce in a sort of gentle cynicism, to take what one can get, to avoid as far as possible all deep attachments, all profound hopes, to steel oneself in indifference. ”

“ Not by detachment or aloofness from happiness and warmth and life are our victories won. That had been the dark temptation, the shadow of my loss, to believe that in so sad and strange an existence the only hope was to stand apart from it all, not to care too much, not to love too closely. That was false, utterly false; a bare and grim philosophy, a timid sauntering. Rather it was better to clasp all things close, to love passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself gladly and joyfully to every deep and true emotion ”

“ It seems fine and romantic enough, when one thinks of another soul in torment. One remembers the old sage, reading quietly at a sunset hour, who had a sudden vision of the fate that should befall him. His book falls from his hands, he sits there, a beautiful and venerable figure enough, staring heavily into the void. It makes me feel that I shall never dare to draw the picture of a man in the grip of suffering again; I have had so little of it in my life, and I have drawn it with a luxurious artistic emotion. ”

“ We talked, Maud and I, for the first time, I think, without reserve, without bitterness, almost without grief, of Alec. What sustains her is the certainty that he is as he was, somewhere, far off, as brave and loving as ever, waiting for us, but waiting with a perfect understanding and knowledge of why we are separated. She dreams of him thus, looking down upon her, and seeming, in her dream, to wonder what there can be to grieve about. I suppose that a mother has a sense of oneness with a child that a father cannot have. ”