English Author Quotes

Ah! what if some unshamed iconoclast
Crumbling old fetish raiments of the past,
Rises from dead cerements the Christ at last?
What if men take to following where He leads,
Weary of mumbling Athanasian creeds?

When in public poetry should take off its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight; it should be seen in the company of thieves and lovers rather than that of journalists and publishers.

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more:
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store:
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I have; they pine, I live.

A journalist who has to borrow a typewriter is bad news.

Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times. Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social category of things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow-ties. Not the sort of attire for a gentleman.

The poet is always concerned with achieving a balance between the inner and the outer world; it is his business to hold in a single thought reality and justice.

Michael Roberts

The wife ought to have the first child and the husband the second, then there wouldn't ever be any more.

Salad, I can't bear salad. It grows while you're eating it, you know.

It is your virtue, being men, to try;
And it is ours, by virtue to deny.

Michael Drayton

We, however, place the love of God and His honour above our own and above the acquisition of many regions

Richard I of England

So Orpheus did for his owne bride,
So I unto my selfe alone will sing,
The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho ring.

Celestial sounds have sometimes been heard on earth.

Somehow love gives even to a dull man the knowledge of his lover's heart.

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,
And nought is everything and everything is nought.

For true happiness, sane enjoyment, you must look to the country, not town. Only you want one true heart beside you with which to enjoy it!

Ellen Buckingham Mathews

It is frequently of much importance, not to the comfort only, but to the recovery of the patient, that he should be enabled to look upon his Physician as his friend.

Thomas Gisborne

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant hours, and elves
Who slept in buds the day,
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge
And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shadowy car.

William Collins

In following their line through, and those of Plantagenet and Tudor, there is but little to soothe the mind.

Charlotte Turner Smith

By trying to do what is right will often entail you having to disagree with others, and this is not easy. Once you start doing it more often, you will find it easier.

Nigel Cumberland

O God! O God! that it were possible To undo things done; to call back yesterday! That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.

A king may spille, a king may save; A king may make of lorde a knave; And of a knave a lorde also.

My Lord Tomnoddy is thirty-four;
The Earl can last but a few years more.
My Lord in the Peers will take his place:
Her Majesty's councils his words will grace.
Office he'll hold and patronage sway;
Fortunes and lives he will vote away;
And what are his qualifications?—ONE!
He's the Earl of Fitzdotterel's eldest son.

Robert Barnabas Brough

By the waters of Life we sat together,
Hand in hand, in the golden days
Of the beautiful early summer weather,
When skies were purple and breath was praise.

Light was first
Through the Lord's word Named day:
Beauteous, bright creation!

The walks put on their summer liveries,
And all things else did hold like similes:
The trees with leaves, with fruits, with flowers clad,
Embrac'd each other, seeming to be glad.