Poets From England

"“You lovers,” said his companion, “are surprised by nothing, except first that your mistress should fancy you, and next, that they should fancy someone else.”"

"“Humphrey, dear,” she said, “we hear you’ve become famous. Is it true?” “It's true if you've heard it,” he replied. “That's what fame is.”"

"“I hope all your mixtures are not as expensive,” said Alan apprehensively. “Oh, dear, no,” said the old man. “It would be no good charging you that sort of price for a love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion.”"

"There is no bore like a despairing lover."

"I reflected that where vanity of that sort is to be found on one side of a contract there is always hope on the other."

"“That does not take you to Hell,” said Louis, “but only to Barons Court. The mistake is pardonable.”"

"He knew that I was impressed, but I knew that he wished to impress me. This made us even, except of course that he still had the money."

"“Selfishness and greed,” said he, “have made the world what it is today.”"

"Take a friendly word of advice. You don't want to make pictures. It’s nothing but worry. Besides, you'll get mixed up with a lot of actors."

"Alice and Irwin were as simple and as happy as any young couple in a family-style motion picture. In fact, they were even happier, for people were not looking at them all the time and their joys were not restricted by the censorship code."

"“To listen,” said little Guis, “is to be drunk without spending a penny. You think you understand; you seem to fly through the air; you have to burst out laughing.”"

"She was complete in every particular, and all of the highest quality; she was a picture gallery, an anthology of the poets, a precipitation of all that has ever been dreamed of love: her goodly eyes like Saphyres shining bright, her forehead yvory white, her cheeks lyke apples which the sun hath rudded, her lips lyke cherryes charming men to bite, her brest lyke to a bowle of creame uncrudded, her paps lyke a lyllies budded, her snowie neck lyke to a marble towre; and all her body like a pallace fayre, ascending up, with many a stately stayre, to honours seat and chastities sweet bowre."

"Now, producers are known to be God-like creatures, and the chief point of resemblance is that they must either create new stars or have no public."

"Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible."

"“Pray, sir,” said she, “tell me only, where am I?” “Why, in Hell, to be sure,” said he, with a hearty laugh. “Oh, thank goodness!” cried she. “I thought I was in Buenos Aires.”"

"It is a sad reflection on life that when there is only one thing to do it is always extremely unpleasant."

"The ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone, and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them, and to have believed in them, and sometimes, just to have accompanied them, for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."

"...one of the powerful dynamics of leadership is being visible. One of the vulnerabilities of being visible is that when you’re visible, you can be seen; and when you can be seen, you can be touched; and when you can be touched, you can be hurt."

"At Allahabad, on the celebration of the Mohurrum, some of the leading persons repaired to the judge to request that the Hindoos, who were about to perform some of their idolatrous worship, should not be permitted to blow their trumpets, and beat their drums, and bring their heathenish devices in contact with the sad and holy solemnity, the manifestations of their grief for the death of the Imaums. They represented, in the most lively manner, the obligation which Christians were under to support the worshippers of the true God against infidels, and were not satisfied with the assurance that they should not be molested by the intermixture of the processions, which should be strictly confined to opposite sides of the city. The Hindoos were equally tenacious in upholding their rights, and it became neceuary to draw out the troopa for the prevention of bloodshed."

"The ornaments worn by Hindostanee females are, generally speaking, very tasteful and elegant; the pattern of the double joomka ear-rings has been borrowed by European jewellers, and bracelets resembling the Indian bangle are now very common; but the splendid necklaces, so richly carved as to glitter like precious stones, are more rarely seen ; they are formed of a series of drops beautifully wrought and suspended from a closely-linked gold chain of exquisite workmanship."

"Since the conquest of the city by Arungzebe, Moosulman architecture has reared its light and elegant erections, amid the more heavy and less tasteful structures of Hindu creation. From a mosque, built upon the ruins of a heathen temple, spring those celebrated minarets, which now rank amid the wonders of the city. Their lofty spires shoot up into the golden sky from a dense cluster of buildings, crowning the barbaric pomp below with graceful beauty."

"The art in which, unhappily, quick and clever urchins attain the highest degree of proficiency, is that of scolding. The Hindostanee vocabulary is peculiarly rich in terms of abuse ; native Indian women, it is said, excel the females of every other country in volubility of utterance, and in the strength and number of the opprobrious epithets which they shower down upon those who raise their ire. They can declaim for five minutes at a time without once drawing breath; and the shrillness of their voices adds considerably to the effect of their eloquence."

"If after ages grow more humaniz'd, And present cruelty almost forgot; How will the reader, shudd'ring, be surpris'd, At living lobsters in a boiling pot."

"Too much you've view'd, too poignantly you've felt, Too long on human sufferings we've dwelt; These woful visions shift, but scenes appear, Which tho' less painful, cause the conscious tear."

"His direct historical value is small; though he preserves now and then a curious detail which has escaped the contemporaneous English Chroniclers, he adds little to our store of facts about the wars of the third Edward. But he is the abstract of the spirit of his time, its undoubted bravery, its glitter, its savagery, its complete absence of pity for the conquered. The greatest merit of his poems lies in their warm and spontaneous expression of national feeling. His predecessors in the political poem had attacked abuses, exposed grievances, or written in the service of a faction. He is the first to speak in the name of the English nation just awakened to a consciousness of its unity and strength."

"It is rare for poems such as these, however topical in their own time, to live on to engage the interests of later readers."

"The creative imagination and poetical fancy which distinguish Chaucer, who, considering the general barbarism of his age and country, may be regarded as a prodigy, admit, it must be acknowledged, of no competition; yet, if the truth may be uttered without offence to the established reputation of that preeminent genius, one may venture to assert that, in point of ease, harmony, and variety of versification, as well as general perspicuity of stile, Laurence Minot is, perhaps, equal, if not superior, to any English poet before the sixteenth, or even, with very few exceptions, before the seventeenth, century"

"Fro Philip the Valais was sir David sent All Ingland to win fro Twede unto Trent"

"Merlin said thus with his mowth, Out of the north into the sowth Suld cum a bare over the se That suld mak many man to fle; And in the se, he said ful right, Suld he schew ful mekill might; And in France he suld bigin To mak tham wrath that er tharein"

"The Scottes with thaire falshede thus went thai obout For to win Ingland whils Edward was out. For Cuthbert of Dorem haved thai no dout; Tharfore at Nevel cros law gan thai lout, Thare louted thai law and leved allane: Thus was David the Bruse into the toure tane."

"Whare er ye, Skottes of Saint Johnes toune? The boste of yowre baner es betin all doune; When ye bosting will bede, sir Edward es boune For to kindel yow care and crak yowre crowne: He has crakked yowre croune, wele worth the while; Schame bityde the Skottes, for thai er full of gile"

"Skottes out of Berwik and of Abirdene, At the Bannok burn war ye to kene, Thare slogh ye many sakles, als it was sene And now has king Edward wroken it, I wene, It es wrokin, I wene, wele wurth the while; War yit with the Skottes, for thai er ful of gile."

"Oure king and his men held the felde Stalwortly, with spere and schelde And thoght to win his right, With lordes and with knightes kene And other doghty men bydene, That war ful frek to fight."

"In this dale I droupe and dare For dern dedes that done me dere. Of Ingland had my hert grete care When Edward founded first to were. The Franche men war frek to fare Ogaines him with scheld and spere, Thai turned ogayn with sides sare, And al thaire pomp noght worth a pere."

"Ihesu, for thi woundes five, in Ingland help us to have pese."

"Men may rede in romance right Of a grete clerk that Merlin hight; Ful many bokes er of him wreten, Als thir clerkes wele may witten; And yit in many prive nokes May men find of Merlin bokes."

"I didn't, I thought, really like her, for really she wasn't the sort of girl to whom I was usually attracted. I'd always thought that the girls who appealed to me most were the rather energetic, rather vigorous, rather healthy girls I saw on the tennis courts or on the beach. The girls who swam well, and whose skins were beautifully tanned, and who had broad shoulders. The girls who looked well in white. The girls with clear, straightforward eyes. The girls who laughed a great deal. I'd always thought I preferred a girl like that, and it was only an unfortunate set of circumstances which prevented me from meeting one."

"Did she know what it was for a man to come to that point in his life when he found it impossible to touch the body of his own wife? To look at it; and to feel nothing. Not to desire it, at all, when the flesh was inert and dead and meaningless? To have the act of love become (with one's own wife) the most meaningless of all acts?"

"There was a noisy rush of water from the bathroom, and she appeared, ready for the evening, a smile she had chosen, I thought, from a small collection of smiles she kept for occasions like this, fixed upon her face."

"Alone; it was the one active passion I had left now, the only real obsession. I had acquired, I hoped, with the passage of the years, the bad years, a measure of patience, and I thought of myself as being somewhat tight-mouthed, and even persevering, virtues I had always so conspicuously lacked, and I thought the time was at last gone when I had exhausted myself with futile rebellions. The rebellions seemed now, from this cool distance, this slight eminence I had achieved, silly and wasteful, and it was cunning that now struck me as the valuable quality to have, the distinctive characteristic. There had been so much blind impetuosity in the past; there had been so many indiscriminate wounds inflicted; I had lacerated myself as well as others so unhappily so many times. Now I fought, or it seemed to me I was fighting, a much sounder although a much more limited and more circumspect war: it consisted mostly of careful withdrawals, of very conscious retreats."

"When man, in the exercise of his mechanical function, puts together a structure, he does it by adding one part to another, so that they lie side-by-side in space, and the whole is made up of all the parts added together. But when nature constructs, she follows a different principle – one which man also, when he is functioning not as mechanic but as artist or poet, must strive to follow. In an organic structure it will be found that the parts interpenetrate and, as it were, express each other in a characteristic way, and that often a single part will seem at the same time to be the whole, or to be potentially the whole. And this is the structural principle which, at all levels from the highest to the lowest, Anthroposophy reveals to us as present in the universe itself."

"The other great advantage of the seasons, both earthly and liturgical, is that they circle slowly round quite independently of one’s own moods and thus become a corrective and offer perspective. I may be feeling glum, but Easter reminds me of resurrection anyway, I may be swayed by some splurge of Christmas consumerism but Advent reminds me that all I really need is the savior who is coming and for whose advent I should prepare. So the seasons, like all the old liturgical patterns, like the practice of reading scripture, can set us free from the tyranny of our own mood swings. In that sense they are always a blessing."

"Francis Atterbury...was a brilliant and dangerous man, prevented only by flaws of temperament from becoming the Newman of the high-church movement. He had splendid gifts, but they were marred by a headiness of judgement, and an inability to brook opposition, or control his wrath when his behaviour was questioned or his authority thwarted. Eloquent as were his utterances in speech and in writing, dazzling his polemic, yet the appearance of great learning was illusory, lacking depth of earth, and in the end he withered."

"Atterbury was nothing more or less than a Jacobite priest. His writings were extolled by that faction, but his letter on Clarendon's History is truly excellent."

"His letter in defence of the authenticity of Lord Clarendon's history, is one of the most beautifull & touching specimens of eloquence in our language."

"[T]here are...powerful Motives to make the Whigs open their Arms to embrace all Strangers: One to strengthen their Party. For I scarce ever knew a Foreigner settled in England, whether of Dutch, German, French, Italian or Turkish Growth, but became a Whig in a little time after mixing with us: An Argument that all the World know our Constitution better than we; or that as Strangers have less Concern for us, they strike in with those who are the least affected to England."

"Vox Populi, Vox Dei is the very Basis, and ground Work, on which all the Super structure of this Pamphlet is rais'd; if therefore we shall prove that, the Voice of the People is the Cry of Hell, leading to Idolatry, Rebellion, Murder, and all the Wickedness the Devil can suggest, it will follow that all the Notions grounded, upon the false Principle of its being the Voice of God, must fall to the Ground, and that the Broacher of them has built upon Sand, and is himself guilty of promoting Irreligion, Profaneness, Sedition, Slaughter, and Confusion."

"Francis Atterbury, the ablest controversialist in the High Church party."

"[W]e live in Evil Days, when the most important and confess'd Truths, such as by the Wisest and Best Men in all Ages have been rever'd, are by Licentious Tongues question'd, argued against, derided; and these things not only whisper'd in Corners, but proclaimed upon the House-tops; own'd and publish'd, in Defiance of the Common Persuasion, the Common Reason, and the Common Interest of Mankind, and of All Authority, both Sacred and Civil. Libertinism hath erected its Standard, hath declared War against Religion, and openly listed Men of its Side and Party."

"The Law is as much a Rule to Her, as to the least of Those who obey her; the fixt Measure, not only of Her governing Power, but even of Her Will to govern; and She makes no other Use of that Power, with which the Laws have invested Her, than to give Life and Force to them."