John Masefield Quotes

"In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder."

"It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?"

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

A. A. Milne Quotes

"Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being."

"Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?"

"If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name."

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

"My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."

"Never forget me, because if I thought you would, I'd never leave."

"No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was human nature."

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries."

"Organizating is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up."

"Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up."

"The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief-call it what you will-than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course."

"Time is swift, it races by; Opportunities are born and die... Still you wait and will not try - A bird with wings who dares not rise and fly."

"To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks."

"What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow."

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."

"You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."

"You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say."

Antonio Machado Quotes

"I have never worked as I am now doing."

"Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking."

Spike Milligan Quotes

"A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree."

"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy."

"And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected."

"Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?"

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, get it out with Optrex."

"Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion."

"Hi vibrato sounded like he was driving a tractor over a ploughed field with weights tied to his scrotum."

"How long was I in the army? Five foot eleven."

"I can speak Esperanto like a native."

"I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge."

"I shook hands with a friendly Arab. I still have my right arm to prove it."

"I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke."

"I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine."

"I'm a hero with coward's legs."

"In India a farmhand was caught in the act with his cow. He said he had bad eyesight and thought it was his wife."

"Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order."

"It was a perfect marriage. She didn't want to and he couldn't."

"Money couldn't buy friends, but you get a better class of enemy."

"My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic."

Edwin Markham Quotes

"A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer's need."

"Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!"

"Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the emptiness of ages in his face, and on his back the burden of the world."

"By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us."

"Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out."

"For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike."

"He drew a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout But love and I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in."

"I have felt it like a glory in my heart."

"It is better to rust out than wear out."

"The crest and crowning of all good, life's final star, is Brotherhood."

"The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?"

"There is a destiny that makes us brothers; None goes his way alone; All that we send into the lives of others Comes back into our own."

"We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life."

"When man to man shall be friend and brother."

Christopher Morley Quotes

"A human being: an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing."

"A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life."

"Act like you expect to get into the end zone."

"Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain."

"Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting."

"Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness."

"Dancing is a wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it."

"God made man merely to hear some praise of what he'd done on those Five Days."

"Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water."

"High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead."

"Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs."

"I had a million questions to ask God: but when I met Him, they all fled my mind; and it didn't seem to matter."

"If we discovered that we only had five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them."

"In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty."

"Let me look at the foulness and ugliness of my body. Let me see myself as an ulcerous sore running with every horrible and disgusting poison."

"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it."

"Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going."

"My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed."

"New York, the nation's thyroid gland."

"No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention."

"No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention."

"Only the sinner has the right to preach."

"People like to imagine that because all our mechanical equipment moves so much faster, that we are thinking faster, too."

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."

"The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people."

"The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came."

"There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning."

"There is only one rule for being a good talker - learn to listen."

"There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way."

"We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up."

"When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue-you sell him a whole new life."

George Meredith Quotes

"A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are."

"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!"

"Caricature is rough truth."

"Cynicism is intellectual dandyism."

"Don't just count your years, make your years count."

"I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man."

"Memoirs are the backstairs of history."

"Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity."

"She poured a little social sewage into his ears."

"Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered."

John McCrae Quotes

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard among the guns below."

"Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from falling hands we throw."

"We shall not sleep, though poppies grow: In Flanders fields."

Katherine Mansfield Quotes

"Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"I am treating you as my friend asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"I want to be all that I am capable of becoming."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"I'm treating you as a friend asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future pluses."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it it's only good for wallowing in."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every month. Others just go over them."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves."

"Katherine Mansfield"

"Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people."

"Katherine Mansfield"

Christopher Marlowe Quotes

"Above our life we love a steadfast friend."

"All places are alike, and every earth is fit for burial."

"Goodness is beauty in the best estate."

"Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd one self place; for where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be."

"Is it not passing brave to be a King and ride in triumph through Persepolis?"

"Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position."

"O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."

"That perfect bliss and sole felicity, the sweet fruition of an earthly crown."

"Virtue is the fount whence honour springs."

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ileum? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!"

"What are kings, when regiment is gone, but perfect shadows in a sunshine day?"

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

"You stars that reigned at my nativity, whose influence hath allotted death and hell."

Louis MacNeice Quotes

"I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity."

"Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me."

Czeslaw Milosz Quotes

"At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. I stare and stare. It seems I was called for this: To glorify things just because they are."

"Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose."

"Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above."

"It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism."

"The masses in highly industrialized countries like England, the United States, or France are largely de-Christianized. Technology, and the way of life it produces, undermines Christianity far more effectively than do violent measures."

"The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history."

"What is poetry which does not save nations or people?"

Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

"A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him."

"Beauty is whatever gives joy."

"Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is."

"God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart."

"I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."

"I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."

"If I love you Wednesday, What is that to you? I do not love you Thursday - so much is true."

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."

"My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light!"

"Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive."

"Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does."

"Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it."

"Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world - it is thin."

"Tea was such a comfort."

"The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity."

"The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through."

"We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race."

"What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it."

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."