Louis MacNeice Quotes

34 Sourced Quotes

It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Louis MacNeice
Blind wantons like the gulls who scream
And rip the edge off any ideal or dream.

Louis MacNeice
Some on commission, some for the love of learning,
Some because they have nothing better to do
Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden
The drumming of the demon in their ears.

Louis MacNeice
O early one morning I walked out like Agag,
Early one morning to walk through the fire
Dodging the pythons that leaked on the pavements
With tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire.

Louis MacNeice
Many people take to animals to escape from human beings - but often, it turns out, because they find the animals so human. Others, of whom I am one, find animals a delightful change just because they are not human and never can be.

Louis MacNeice
None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives. Are self deceivers, but the worst of all Deceits is to murmur 'Lord, I am not worthy' And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.

Louis MacNeice
In my own prejudice.. I would have of a poet... whose worlds would not be too esoteric.. fond of talking.... capable of pity and laughter.. appreciative of womem.. involved in personal relationships... susceptible to physical impressions'

Louis MacNeice
It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

Louis MacNeice
Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go.

Louis MacNeice
Or will one's wife also belong to that country
And can one never find the perfect stranger?

Louis MacNeice
It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Louis MacNeice
You know the worst: your wills are fickle,
Your values blurred, your hearts impure
And your past life a ruined church--
But let your poison be your cure.

Louis MacNeice
Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrils
From Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake:
"Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen;
Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake."

Louis MacNeice
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me,
Otherwise kill me.

Louis MacNeice
All that I would like to be is human, having a share
in a civilized, articulate and well-adjusted
community where the mind is given its due
but the body is not distrusted

Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its net of gold.

Louis MacNeice
And I envy the intransigence of my own
Countrymen who shoot to kill and never
See the victim's face become their own
Or find his motive sabotage their motives.

Louis MacNeice
I would have a poet able-bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions.

Louis MacNeice
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing.

Louis MacNeice
There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces
The guttural sorrow of the refugees.

Louis MacNeice
A city built upon mud;
A culture built upon profit;
Free speech nipped in the bud,
The minority always guilty.
Why should I want to go back
To you, Ireland, my Ireland?

Louis MacNeice
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

Louis MacNeice
Up the Rebels, To Hell with the Pope,
And God Save--as you prefer--the King or Ireland.
The land of scholars and saints:
Scholars and saints my eye, the land of ambush,
Purblind manifestoes, never-ending complaints

Louis MacNeice
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar.

Louis MacNeice
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

Louis MacNeice