W. N. P. Barbellion Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

On the bus the other day a woman with a baby sat opposite, the baby bawled, and the woman at once began to unlace herself, exposing a large red udder, which she swung into the baby's face. The infant, however, continued to cry and the woman said, 'Come on, there's a good boy – if you don't, I shall give it to the gentleman opposite.'

W. N. P. Barbellion
From the drawing-room window I see pass almost daily an old gentleman with white hair, a firm step, broad shoulders, healthy pink skin, a sunny smile - always singing to himself as he goes - a happy, rosy-cheeked old fellow, with a rosy-cheeked mind I should like to throw mud at him.

W. N. P. Barbellion
An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand.

W. N. P. Barbellion
Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

W. N. P. Barbellion
The test for true love is whether you can endure the thought of cutting your sweetheart's toe-nails.

W. N. P. Barbellion
I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy.

W. N. P. Barbellion
As soon as we are born, if we could but get up, bath, dress, shave, breakfast once for all, if we could 'cut' these monotonous cycles of routine. If the sun rose it would stay up, or once we were alive we were immortal!

W. N. P. Barbellion
This great bully of a universe overwhelms me. The stars make me cower. I am intimidated by the immensity surrounding my own littleness.

W. N. P. Barbellion