The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (22 page)
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Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
Habit is second nature.
2
You cannot argue with someone who denies the first principles.
3
God and nature do nothing in vain.
4
All men naturally desire to know.
5
Parents love their children more than children love their parents.
6
Time is the measure of movement.
1907–73
I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
"As I Walked Out One Evening" (1940)
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the teacup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
"As I Walked Out One Evening" (1940)
Make intercession
For the treason of all clerks.
"At the Grave of Henry James" (1945).
August for the people and their favourite islands.
title of poem (1936)
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man.
"Death's Echo" (1937).
To save your world you asked this man to die:
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
"Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier" (1955)
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
"Epitaph on a Tyrant" (1940).
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
"Funeral Blues" (1936)
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1940) pt. 2
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate.
"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1940) pt. 3
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
"In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1940) pt. 3
Look, stranger, at this island now.
title of poem (1936)
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm.
"Lullaby" (1940)
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters.
"Musée des Beaux Arts" (1940)
Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
"Musée des Beaux Arts" (1940)
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word "Intellectual" suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.
New Year Letter
(1941) l. 1277 n.
This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
"Night Mail" (1936) pt. 1
Private faces in public places
Are wiser and nicer
Than public faces in private places.
Orators
(1932) dedication
Out on the lawn I lie in bed,
Vega conspicuous overhead.
"Out on the lawn I lie in bed" (1936)
O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.
"O what is that sound" (1936)
Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private
pagus
or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.
"Prologue: the Birth of Architecture" (1966) postscript
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
"September 1, 1939" (1940)
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
"September 1, 1939" (1940)
A shilling life will give you all the facts.
title of poem (1936)
At Twenty I tried to
vex my elders, past Sixty it's the young whom
I hope to bother.
"Shorts I" (1969)
A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
"Shorts II" (1976)
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.
"Spain 1937" (1937) st. 23
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
The Dyer's Hand
(1963) "Reading"
Art is born of humiliation.
Stephen Spender
World Within World
(1951) ch. 2
Nothing I wrote in the thirties saved one Jew from Auschwitz.
attributed
1820–89
La nostalgie de la boue!Longing to be back in the mud!
Le Mariage d'Olympe
(1855) act 1, sc. 1
of Hippo
ad
354–430
Give me chastity and continency—but not yet!
Confessions
(
ad
397–8) bk. 8, ch. 7
When he was reading, he drew his eyes along over the leaves, and his heart searched into the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.
of St Ambrose
Confessions
(
ad
397–8) bk. 6, ch. 3
Tolle lege, tolle lege.Take up and read, take up and read.
Confessions
(
ad
397–8) bk. 8, ch. 12
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam.Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee.
Confessions
(
ad
397–8) bk. 10, ch. 27
There is no salvation outside the church.
De Baptismo contra Donatistas
bk. 4, ch. 17, sect. 24.
Dilige et quod vis fac.Love and do what you will.
often quoted as "Ama et fac quod vis"
In Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos
(
ad
413) tractatus 7, sect. 8
Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.With love for mankind and hatred of sins.
often quoted as "Love the sinner but hate the sin"
letter 211 in J.-P. Migne (ed.)
Patrologiae Latinae
(1845) vol. 33
Roma locuta est; causa finita est.Rome has spoken; the case is concluded.
traditional summary of words found in
Sermons
(Antwerp, 1702) no. 131, sect. 10