Quotes to inspire and reflect

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

On awaking he . . . instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, &c., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

I pass, like night, from land to land;

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

The ice was here, the ice was there,

“God save thee, ancient Mariner!

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

And you want to travel with her,

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord

And when He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him

This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.

Les choses que je conte

The barbarians come out at night. Before darkness falls the last goat must be brought in, the gates barred, a watch set in every lookout to call the hours. All night, it is said, the barbarians prowl about bent on murder and rapine. Children in their dreams see the shutters part and fierce barbarian faces leer through. “The barbarians are here!” the children scream, and cannot be comforted.

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When it’s so lucrative to cheat.

Je suis un mensonge qui dit toujours la vérité .

[ Remark during Paris Peace Conference, 1919, about Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” :] The Good Lord had only ten.

No graven images may be

[ Upon being told that his son had joined the Communist Party :] My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.

The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garonne, we will fight even on the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea.

Without the possibility of suicide, I would have killed myself long ago.

My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war.

[ Replying to Nancy Astor’s saying “If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!” :] And if I were your husband I would drink it.

[ To Anthony Eden about a long report from the latter :] As far as I can see you have used every cliché except “God is Love” and “Please adjust your dress before leaving.”

[ On his portrait, painted by Graham Sutherland :] I look as if I was having a difficult stool.

[ Of Bernard Montgomery :] In defeat unbeatable: in victory unbearable.

[ Describing Clement Attlee :] A sheep in sheep’s clothing.

[ Of Clement Attlee :] A modest man who has a good deal to be modest about.

It is not easy to see how things could be worsened by a parley at the summit, if such a thing were possible.

Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.

The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had. . . . Our power placed us above the rest. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations.

It may almost be said, “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.”

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

On the night of the tenth of May [1940], at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. . . . From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

We should not abandon our special relationship with the United States and Canada about the atomic bomb.

On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when. We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.

The proud German army by its sudden collapse, sudden crumbling and breaking up, has once again proved the truth of the saying “The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet.”

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.

I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny.