Quotes to inspire and reflect

I met a traveller from an antique land

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

Nought may endure but Mutability.

I met Murder on the way—

When the lamp is shattered

Most wretched men

Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

The awful shadow of some unseen Power

I never was attached to that great sect,

The world’s great age begins anew,

That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

A widow bird sat mourning for her love

From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

He is a portion of the loveliness

He has out-soared the shadow of our night.

A pardlike Spirit, beautiful and swift.

Winter is come and gone,

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,

The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

[Dancing is] a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

The trouble, Mr Goldwyn, is that you are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.

The younger generation is knocking at the door, and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

‘Do you know what a pessimist is?’ ‘A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.’

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

I’m one of the undeserving poor … up agen middle-class morality all the time … What is middle-class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

You will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.