“Imagination should
A reconciler, not a rebel, be,
To teach the heart of man to apprehend
Nature's vicissitudes, and bear his own,
With sympathetic fancy.”
Source: Fortunatus the Pessimist (1892), Urania in Act IV, sc. ii; p. 178.
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Alfred Austin 56
British writer and poet 1835–1913Related quotes

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 444.

“Some things are of that nature as to make
One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache.”
The Author's Way of sending forth his Second Part of the Pilgrim
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part II

Context: A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
On "Sir Roger", in The Spectator No. 122 (20 July 1711).

Nature's Nobleman (1844)
Context: Away with false fashion, so calm and so chill,
Where pleasure itself cannot please;
Away with cold breeding, that faithlessly still
Affects to be quite at its ease;
For the deepest in feeling is highest in rank,
The freest is first of the band,
Nature's own Nobleman, friendly and frank,
Is a man with his heart in his hand!

Polybius. The Histories of Polybius, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. London, New York: Macmillan and Co., 1889. Book I, Chapter 1
The Histories

Section 6 : Higher Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed.
It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.

Quoted in "Feeling Rejected? Join Updike, Mailer, Oates..." by Barbara Bauer and Robert F. Moss, New York Times (21 July 1985), section 7, page 1, column 1
General sources

“A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.”
Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 12

“The poet should touch our heart by showing his own”
Quote by Thomas Hardy from The life of Thomas Hardy 1840-1928 by Florence Emily Hardy ASIN: B0027MJJSI Macmillan (1 Jan 1962)
Attributed