Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Algernon Charles Swinburne (English Poet)

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was an English lyric poet, dramatist, and critic. He was infamous for his passionate attacks on Victorian morality—he wrote verses on sex, sadomasochism, and vampires. His critical work helped stimulate appreciation of older Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists such as the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, Anne) and of William Blake.

Born in London to the aristocracy, Swinburne socialized with the Pre-Raphaelites, including the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne attained fame with Atalanta in Calydon (1865,) a poetic drama based on Greek tragedy. His other works include Poems and Ballads (1866,) A Song of Italy (1867,) and Tristram of Lyonesse (1882.)

Swinburne was also well known for his outrageous personality—exceptionally overdramatic, he liked to slide down banisters unclothed. He would also skip around a room, screeching his poetry at the top of his lungs or yelling blasphemous things to God.

For many years, Swinburne was stuck to a cycle of excess, breakdown, and revival. From 1878, Swinburne lived in near seclusion after his literary agent forcibly removed him from his unhealthy lifestyle and weaned him from alcohol and his decadent friends. Swinburne wrote 23 volumes of poetry, prose, and drama during these years.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Time turns the old days to derision, our loves into corpses or wives; and marriage and death and division make barren our lives.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Time Management, Time

Man, a dunce uncouth, errs in age and youth: babies know the truth.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Children

A little space of time before time expires; a little way of breath.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Time Management

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things in life.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Greatness

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the seasons of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Seasons

Change lays her hand not upon the truth.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Change

We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, thou art noble and nude and antique.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

Hope knows not if fear speaks truth, nor fear whether hope be blind as she.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Hope

Wherever there is a grain of loyalty there is a glimpse of freedom.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Loyalty

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