English Author Quotes

Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.

Recently a young journalist came to interview me about what I was doing the day war broke out. During the course of the interview I recounted the deaths of my only brother, my husband's only brother, a brother in law and my four best friends. "So," she said, did the war affect you in any way?

Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful reaction of his mind in fierce counter-agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admiration.

Thomas De Quincey

Now that Fate
Has brought me what so long, I so desired,
It is too late,
I am too tired.

Science is concerned with finding out and stating the facts: poetry's task is to give you the look, the smell, the taste, the "feel" of those facts.

Cecil Day Lewis

Tell them, my soul, the fears that make me quake:
The smouldering brimstone and the burning lake,
Life feeding death, death ever life devouring,
Torments not moved, unheard, yet still roaring,
God lost, hell found,—ever, never begun.
Now bid me into flame from smoke to run!

William Alabaster

There is more evil in a drop of sin than in a sea of affliction.

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

A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.

J. B. Priestley

E'er time and place were, time and place were not, When Primitive Nothing something straight begot, Then all proceeded from the great united — What.

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that he on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those
Whom he to follow him hath chose.

Is it not easy to conceive the World in your Mind? To think the Heavens fair? The Sun Glorious? The Earth fruitful? The Air Pleasant? The Sea Profitable? And the Giver bountiful? Yet these are the things which it is difficult to retain. For could we always be sensible of their use and value, we should be always delighted with their wealth and glory.

Thomas Traherne

Love lives with Nature, not with lust. Go find her in the flowers.

Look in, and see Christ's chosen saint In triumph wear his Christ-like chain; No fear lest he should swerve or faint; "His life is Christ, his death is gain.

There's nothing wrong with sexual feelings in themselves, so long as they are straightforward and not sneaking or sly. The right sort of sex stimulus is invaluable to human daily life. Without it the world grows grey.

Never ride your horse more than five-and-thirty miles a day, always taking more care of him than of yourself; which is right and reasonable, seeing as how the horse is the best animal of the two.

Whoso maintains that I am humbled now
(Who wait the Awful Day) is still a liar;
I hope to meet my Maker brow to brow
And find my own the higher.

Frances Cornford

A quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd: they are still but in their way, both helpers of nature.

William Wycherley

What though the sea be calm? trust to the shore, Ships have been drown'd, where late they danc'd before.

Bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery.

O how beautiful is morning!
How the sunbeams strike the daisies
And the kingcups fill the meadow
Like a golden-shielded army
Marching to the uplands fair.

A beautiful envelope for mortality, presenting a glittering and polished exterior, the appearance of which gives no certain indication of the real value of what is contained therein.

Clara Lucas Balfour

But thou mayst grant this humble prayer,
Forget me not! forget me not!

A little of what you like does you good. But you can have too much of a good thing.

Dick King-Smith