Vernon Lee

The greatest pleasure of reading consists in re-reading.

— Vernon Lee

Despite our complicated civilization, so called, or perhaps on account of it, we are all of us a mere set of barbarians,…

— Vernon Lee

Mankind may be divided into playgoers and not playgoers.

— Vernon Lee

Art is the expression of a man's life, of his mode of being, of his relations with the universe, since it is,…

— Vernon Lee

A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness.

— Vernon Lee

There is too little courtship in the world. ... For courtship means a wish to stand well in the other person's eyes,…

— Vernon Lee

“If there are such things as ghosts," he replied, "I don't think they should be taken lightly. God would not permit them…

— Vernon Lee

What being at leisure means is more easily felt than defined.

— Vernon Lee

There is an unlucky tendency ... to allow every new invention to add to life's complications, and every new power to increase…

— Vernon Lee

things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging is a useful, rapid way of dispatching business, it does undoubtedly…

— Vernon Lee

Leisure requires the evidence of our own feelings, because it is not so much a quality of time as a peculiar state…

— Vernon Lee

As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may…

— Vernon Lee

“The fact is, that having once seen Alice Oke in the reality, it was quite impossible to remember that one could have…

— Vernon Lee

There is no end to the deceits of the past.

— Vernon Lee

poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the…

— Vernon Lee

There is too little courtship in the world.

— Vernon Lee

Some persons' letters seem almost framed to afford a series of alibis for their personality.

— Vernon Lee