The Secret Glory quotes

To use a figure that would have appealed to him, it was if one quarrelled with a plain, old-fashioned meetinghouse because it was not in the least like Lincoln Cathedral.

A chimney may not be a decorative object, but then it does not profess to be a spire or a pinnacle far in the spiritual city.

But Meyrick was always scolding meetinghouses because they were not cathedrals. He has been heard to rave for hours against useful, unpretentious chimney-pots because they bore no resemblance to celestial spires.

A chimney may not be a decorative object, but then it does not profess to be a spire or a pinnacle far in the spiritual city.

But Meyrick was always scolding meetinghouses because they were not cathedrals.

He has been heard to rave for hours against useful, unpretentious chimney-pots because they bore no resemblance to celestial spires.

Woe and great sorrow are on him, for he hath looked unworthily into the Tremendous Mysteries, and on the Secret Glory which is hidden from the Holy Angels.

“Poetry is the only possible way of saying anything that is worth saying at all.”

This was an axiom that, in later years, Ambrose Meyrick’s friends were forced to hear at frequent intervals.

“Of course,” he would say, “the symbolism is inadequate; but that is the defect of speech of any kind when you have once ventured beyond the multiplication table and the jargon of the Stock Exchange.

Inadequacy of expression is merely a minor part of the great tragedy of humanity.

Only an ass thinks that he has succeeded in uttering the perfect content of his thought without either excess or defect.”

but that is the defect of speech of any kind when you have once ventured beyond the multiplication table and the jargon of the Stock Exchange. Inadequacy of expression is merely a minor part of the great tragedy of humanity.

Only an ass thinks that he has succeeded in uttering the perfect content of his thought without either excess or defect.

”

“Iss; I be the last of all. They do all like the muck the brewer sends better than cwrw dda.”

“The whole world likes muck better than good drink, now.”

“You be right, Sir. Old days and old ways of our fathers, they be gone forever.

it was no wonder if Meyrick did look a bit queer after the achievement of such an adventure. The funk of aforetime had found courage; the air of rapture was easily understood.

It is probable that if, in the nature of things, it had been possible for an English schoolboy to meet St. Francis of Assisi, the boy would have concluded that the saint must have just made 200 not out in first-class cricket.

But Ambrose walked in a strange light;

Besides, no one wanted to offend Horbury, who was suspected of possessing a revengeful temper; and it had not dawned on the Lupton mind that the rumours they themselves were circulating would eventually ruin the High Usher’s chances of the Headmastership.

Each gossip heard, as it were, only his own mutter at the moment. He did not realise that when a great many people are muttering all at once an ugly noise of considerable volume is being produced.

It is true that a few of the masters were somewhat cold in their manner. They lacked the social gift of dissimulation, and could not help showing their want of cordiality.

As we have no means of knowing exactly what or how much that letter told him, one is not in a position to say whether he recognised the singularity—one might almost say, the eccentricity—with which his punishment was stage-managed.

Nec deus intersit certainly; but a principle may be pushed too far

, and a critic might point out that, putting avenging deities in their machines on one side, it was rather going to the other extreme to bring about the Great Catastrophe by means of bad sherry, a trying Headmaster, boiled mutton, a troublesome schoolboy and …

there glittering with iridescent scum vomited from some other scoundrel’s castle. And for the waterpools of the woods he was free to gaze at the dark green liquor in the tanks of the Sulphuric Acid factory, but a little way out of town.

Lupton was a very rising place.

His body was faint with the burning heat and the foulness of all about him, and his soul was sick with loneliness and friendlessness and unutterable longing. He had already mastered his Bradshaw and had found out the bridge over the railway;

Here, then, was the Palace of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no end to the number of them, for they could not be counted.

For the stones of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor.

If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it, since it could not be discerned.

and if you would count those under his command—go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River. But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy matter, for

Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset.

He lit it with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass;

But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset.

He lit it with the sun and moon.

There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass;

the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be uttered.

In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the chorus of the birds.

But wise men heard that song from the faery regions and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who were bards in the Isle of Britain.

Ambrose had heard the song from the faery regions. He had heard it in swift whispers at his ear, in sighs upon his breast, in the breath of kisses on his lips.

Never was he numbered amongst the despisers of Eos.

Mr. Horbury had suffered from one or two slight twinges of conscience for a few days after he had operated on his nephew.

“ ‘Ah, now, would your young honour do yourself the pleasure of giving the poor old fiddler a penny or maybe two: for

Lupton is the very hell of a town altogether

, and when I play to dirty rogues the Reel of the Warriors, they ask for something about Two Obadiahs—the devil’s black curse be on them!

If he thinks that, he is an ass. Incense, vestments, candles, all ceremonies, processions, rites—all these things are miserably inadequate; but they do not abound in the horrible pitfalls, misapprehensions, errors which are inseparable from speech of men used as an expression of the Church.

In a savage dance there may be a vast deal more of the truth than in many of the hymns in our hymnbooks.

“After all, as Martinez said, we must even be content with what we have, whether it be censers or syllogisms, or both. The way of the censer is certainly the safer, as I have said;

… saw the ‘engendering of the Crow’ black as pitch, the flight of the Dove with Silver Wings, and at last Sol rose red and glorious, and I fell down and gave thanks to heaven for this most wonderful gift, the ‘Sun blessed of the Fire.’

I had dispossessed myself of all, and I found that I possessed all; I had thrown away all the money in my purse, and I was richer than I had ever been; I had died, and I had found a new life in the land of the living.

“It is curious that I should now have to explain the pertinency of all that I have written to the title of this Note—concerning Gaiety. It should not be necessary. The chain of thought is almost painfully obvious. But I am afraid it is necessary.

I do. Nelly, poor dear, had warm lemonade, and I had warm beer—warm chemicals, I mean. But the odour!

Why doesn’t some scientific man stop wasting his time over a lot of useless rubbish and discover a way of bottling the odour of the past?

“Ah! but if he did so, in a phial of rare crystal with a stopper as secure as the seal of Solimaun ben Daoud would I preserve one most precious scent, inscribing on the seal, within a perfect pentagram, the mystic legend ‘No.

and the record and praise of the Club are in all the papers. It is a pity that Carrol is dead.

He would not have sworn: he would have grinned.

Even then, though he was not glorious, he was observant, and he left a brief note, a sort of thumbnail sketch, of his impressions that night at the Château de Chinon.

Those who were present on a certain occasion will not soon forget his rejoinder to “a gentleman in the company” who said that for truth to nature he went to George Eliot.

“I was speaking of men and women, Sir,” was the answer, “not of lice.”

The gentleman in question, who was quite an influential man—some whisper that he was an editor—was naturally very much annoyed.

and it scarcely seems to have occurred to our ‘Temperance’ advocates that when they urge on us the example and abstinence of the beasts they have advanced the deadliest of all arguments against their nostrum.

The Laughing Jackass is a teetotaller, doubtless, but no sane man should desire to be a Laughing Jackass.

“But the history of the men who have attained, who have done the glorious things of the earth and have become forever exalted is the history of the men who have quested the Cup. Dionysius, said the Greeks, civilised the world;

“

The Flagons of the Song of Songs did not contain ginger-beer.

“But the worst of it is we shall not merely descend to the beasts. We shall fall very far below the beasts. A black fellow is good, and a white fellow is good.

There is more than this, too. Here and there one can hear, as it were, the whisper and the hint of deeper mysteries, visions of a great experiment and a great achievement to which some men may be called. In his own words:

“Within the Tavern there is an Inner Tavern, but the door of it is visible to few indeed.”

In Ambrose’s mind in the after years the stout notebook was dear, perhaps as a substitute for that aroma of the past in a phial which he has declared so desirable an invention.

He dropped into silence; from his expression he seemed to be cursing “the populace” with oaths too frightful to be uttered. He rose suddenly and turned to Ambrose.

“Artist⁠—and mystic. Yes. You will probably be crucified. Good evening⁠ ⁠… and a fine martyrdom to you!”

He was gone with a charming smile and a delightful bow to “Madame.” Ambrose looked after him with a puzzled face; his last words had called up some memory that he could not capture;

that breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and supper are orgies only used by the most wicked and degraded wretches, destined to an awful and eternal doom? In such a world, I think, you would discover some very striking irregularities in diet.

Facts are known to be stubborn things, but if their very existence is denied they become ferocious and terrible things.

Coventry Patmore was angry, and with reason, when he heard that even at the Vatican the statues had received the order of the fig-leaf.

in a word, he is of the great middle-class, the backbone of England and of the Protestant Religion. He subscribes to the excellent society which prosecutes booksellers for selling the Decameron of Boccaccio.

He has from ten to fifteen children, all of whom were found by Mamma in the garden.

“ ‘Mr. King was a horrible man,’ said Nelly, describing her first place; ‘he had a great greasy pale face with red whiskers, and a shiny bald head; he was fat, too, and when he smiled it made one feel sick.