John Betjeman Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

Imprisoned in a cage of sound, even the trivial seems profound

John Betjeman
Oh Wasn't it naughty of Smudges? Oh, Mummy, I'm sick with disgust. She threww me in front of the judges, And my silly old collar-bone's bust.

John Betjeman
Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow.

John Betjeman
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait Because I have a luncheon date.

John Betjeman
History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.

John Betjeman
Oh! Chintzy, Chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive!

John Betjeman
I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.

John Betjeman
No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm
Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.
The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm,
Its chimneys steady against the mackerel sky.

John Betjeman
It's strange that those we miss the most
Are those we take for granted.

John Betjeman
Oh! would I were her racket pressed With hard excitement to her breast.

John Betjeman
Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans.
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy,
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me.

John Betjeman
Old men who never cheated, never doubted,
Communicated monthly, sit and stare
At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way
Where a young man lands hatless from the air.

John Betjeman
Official designs are aggressively neuter,
The Puritan work of an eyeless computer.

John Betjeman
Broad of Church and 'broad of Mind',
Broad before and broad behind,
A keen ecclesiologist,
A rather dirty Wykehamist.

John Betjeman
I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think.

John Betjeman
Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament—you against me.
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Betjeman
And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke. Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat,
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!

John Betjeman
The dread of beatings! Dread of being late!
And, greatest dread of all, the dread of games!

John Betjeman
The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living.

John Betjeman
Spirits of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe
Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky.

John Betjeman
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

John Betjeman
It's awf'lly bad luck on Diana,
Her ponies have swallowed their bits;
She fished down their throats with a spanner
And frightened them all into fits.

John Betjeman
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Betjeman
I heard the church bells hollowing out the sky,
Deep beyond deep, like never-ending stars.

John Betjeman
On Bede Griffiths's trip to India in order to form a dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism:
I suppose he's trying to combine Mumbo with Jumbo in roughly equal proportions.

John Betjeman