British Poet Quotes

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Aleister Crowley

Hilaire Belloc

Robert Southey

Rupert Brooke

Gerard Manley Hopkins

James I of Scotland

Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!

When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation.

Lady Margaret Sackville

There is practically no difference at all between a family and a nation, except the difference in size. A family is a nation seen through the wrong end of a telescope; a nation is a family seen through the right end of a telescope, and I don't believe it is possible to achieve a happy and successful family life, or a happy and successful national life, unless we bear this simple fact in mind and behave accordingly.

It is not, in fact, cookery books that we need half so much as cooks really trained to a knowledge of their duties.

What is the life of a man more than the life of a lamb, or any guiltless animal?

The spiritual element, the really important part of religion, has no concern with Time and Space, temporary mundane laws, or conduct.

Richard Le Gallienne

Cricket is an ancient pastime; it ripened sweetly, it has endured noblt.

How sweet is harmless solitude!
What can its joys control?
Tumults and noise may not intrude,
To interrupt the soul.

There are so many kinds of awful men One can't avoid them all. She often said She'd never make the same mistake again: She always made a new mistake instead.

The within is ceaselessly becoming the without. From the state of a man's heart doth proceed the conditions of his life; his thoughts blossom into deeds, and his deeds bear the fruitage of character and destiny.

O yowthe allas why wilt thow nat enclyne,
And un-to reuled reform bowe thee?
Syn resoun is the verray streighte lyne
Þat ledith folk un-to felicitee.

Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent
Of odours in unhaunted deserts.

William Chamberlayne

The words you spoke were frenzied prayers to chemistry..

Carol Ann Duffy

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
And some are treasured for their markings –
They cause the eyes to melt
Or the body to shriek without pain.

Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world; doth live his own; Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love.

William Drummond of Hawthornden

Forget. Memory is pain trying to resurrect itself.

When the voice of Christ speaks through the Word, then you will arise, and leave all, and follow Him.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne

As I go musing through this mournful land
Soothed by the pine-tree's solemn harmony,
Thy well-loved image comes and walks by me.
I seem to hold thee by the gentle hand
And talk of things I dimly understand,
That thy dear spirit set to mine may be
As to an intricate lock the simple key.

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves.

A. S. J. Tessimond

A prowde hert in a beggers brest,
A fowle visage with gay temples of atyre,
Horrible othes with an holy prist,
A justice of juges to selle and lete to hyre,
A knave to comande and have an empire,
To yeve a jugement of that never was wrought,
To preche of pees and sette eche man on fyre,
It may wele ryme but it accordith nought.

It takes more than a short holiday to get a real love of Nature; such a love as makes trees like human companions, and green the colour we look for everywhere we go.

Again the violet of our early days Drinks beauteous azure from the golden sun, And kindles into fragrance at his blaze.

Ebenezer Elliott

Wouldst thou view the Lion's den? Search afar from haunts of men — Where the reed-encircled rill, Oozes from the rocky hill, By its verdure far descried 'Mid the desert brown and wide.

Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet, And all things are made young with your desires.

Francis Thompson

Poetry is a second translation of the soul's feeling; it must be rendered into thought, and thought must change its nebulous robe of semi-wording into definite language, before it reaches another heart. Music is a first translation of feeling, needing no second, but entering the heart direct.

Frances Ridley Havergal