“Hospitality should be accidental, spontaneous, and impulsive, not pre-arranged and calculated.”

— Alfred Austin, Haunts of Ancient Peace (1902)

About Alfred Austin

1835 – 1913

English poet, Poet Laureate from 1896 to 1913.

“Knowledge is to the imagination what fuel is to flame.”

“Let your house / Be spacious more than splendid, and be books / And busts your most conspicuous furniture.”

“Friendship craves / The commerce of the mind, not the exchange / Of emulous feasts that foster sycophants.”

“Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.”

“Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'”

“Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness.”

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.”