John Betjeman Short Quotes

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

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

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

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

John Betjeman
I am still reeling with delight at the soaring majesty of Norfolk.

John Betjeman
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

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

John Betjeman
The sort of girl I like to see
Smiles down from her great height at me.

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

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

John Betjeman
A whispering and watery Norfolk sound
Telling of all the moonlit reeds around.

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

John Betjeman
Waiter With Fish Order: Are you smelt, sir?
John Betjeman: Only by the discerning.

John Betjeman
Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

John Betjeman
Ghastly Good Taste, or a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture.

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

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

John Betjeman
Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells
And sights before the dark of reason grows.

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

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

John Betjeman
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.

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

John Betjeman
Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray
Of prunus and forsythia across the public way.

John Betjeman
The Church's Restoration
In eighteen-eighty-three
Has left for contemplation
Not what there used to be.

John Betjeman
But I'm dying now and done for,
What on earth was all the fun for?
I am ill and old and terrified and tight.

John Betjeman
Sing on, with hymns uproarious,
Ye humble and aloof,
Look up! and oh how glorious
He has restored the roof!

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
Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl,
Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five.

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

John Betjeman
Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.

John Betjeman