British Poet Quotes

Great minds against themselves conspire, and shun the cure they most desire.

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

Richard Le Gallienne
Richard Le Gallienne
The works of nature will bear a thousand views and reviews: the more frequently and narrowly we look into them, the more occasion we shall have to admire their beauty.

Francis Atterbury
Francis Atterbury
The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

there are sufferers with guns movin breeze through the trees there are people waging war in the heat and hunger of the streets.

Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Anyone happy in this age and place Is daft or corrupt. Better to abdicate From a material and spiritual terrain Fit only for barbarians.

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

I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford
Against a pearl-grey sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die.

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.

And this was your Cradle? Why, surely, my Jenny,
Such cozy dimensions go clearly to show
You were an exceedingly small pickaninny,
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.

The church of the elect, which is partly militant on earth, and partly triumphant in heaven, resembles a city built on both sides of a river. There is but the stream of death between grace and glory. Death, to God's people, is but a ferry-boat.

Augustus Toplady
Augustus Toplady
In your deep floods
Drown all my faults and fears;
Not let His eye
See sin, but through my tears.

The purity is a question of
names. We are here to utter them. This is
a prayer. I have it now between my
teeth and my eyes, on my forehead. Know
the names. It is as simple as the purity
of sentiment: it is as simple
as that.

The lesson is that dying men must groan;
And poets groan in rhymes that please the ear.

And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawney die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Shall know the reason why!

Under this stone, Reader, survey
Dead Sir John Vanbrugh's house of clay.
Lie heavy on him, Earth! for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee!

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
Frances Ridley Havergal
I liked having some time to myself. Our family was such a close one, you could get smothered. Of course, we didn't always agree with one another. Sometimes I quarreled with my brother and sisters, but I couldn't remember hating anyone for more than five minutes.

Ah! fraudful malice! how shall wisdom's care Escape the poison of thy gilded snare!

Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews

Forget. Memory is pain trying to resurrect itself.

I know I could enchain him with a smile:
And lead him captive with a gentle word,
I scorn my look should ever man beguile,
Or other speech, than meaning to afford.

Too late I stayed,—forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of time
That only treads on flowers.

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.