People From Liverpool

"Thought may well be ever ranging, And opinion ever changing, Task-work be, though ill begun, Dealt with by experience better; By the law and by the letter Duty done is duty done Do it, Time is on the wing!"

"Come back again, old heart! Ah me! Methinks in those thy coward fears There might, perchance, a courage be, That fails in these the manlier years; Courage to let the courage sink, Itself a coward base to think, Rather than not for heavenly light Wait on to show the truly right."

"Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there In small bright specks upon the visible side Of our strange being’s party-coloured web."

"’Twas on a sunny summer day I trod a mighty city’s street, And when I started on my way My heart was full of fancies sweet; But soon, as nothing could be seen, But countenances sharp and keen, Nought heard or seen around but told Of something bought or something sold, And none that seemed to think or care That any save himself was there."

"The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead."

"Alas for love, if thou wert all, And naught beyond, O Earth!"

"They grew in beauty side by side, They filled one home with glee: Their graves are severed far and wide By mount and stream and sea."

"But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew Midst foliage of no kindred hue; Through the laburnum’s dropping gold Rose the light shaft of Orient mould, And Europe’s violets, faintly sweet, Purpled the mossbeds at its feet."

"I have looked on the hills of the stormy North, And the larch has hung his tassels forth."

"thumb|Signature of Felicia HemansCalm on the bosom of thy God, Fair spirit, rest thee now!"

"In the busy haunts of men."

"And the heavy night hung dark, The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore."

"The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky Their giant branches tossed."

"I had a hat. It was not all a hat,— Part of the brim was gone: Yet still I wore it on."

"Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman’s axe lies free, And the reaper’s work is done."

"Leaves have their time to fall, And flowers to wither at the north-wind’s breath, And stars to set; but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!"

"Oh, call my brother back to me! I cannot play alone: The summer comes with flower and bee,— Where is my brother gone?"

"The stately Homes of England, How beautiful they stand! Amidst their tall ancestral trees, O'er all the pleasant land."

"The flames roll'd on­-he would not go Without his father's word; That father, faint in death below, His voice no longer heard."

"Thou hast been round us, like a viewless spirit, Known only by the music on the air; The leaf or flowers which thou hast named inherit A beauty known but from thy breathing there: For thou didst on them fling thy strong emotion, The likeness from itself the fond heart gave; As planets from afar look down on ocean, And give their own sweet image to the wave."

"Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they found — Freedom to whorship God."

"What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine, The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith's pure shrine."

"We are tired of having a 'sphere' doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is 'unwomanly'. We want to be natural just for a change … we must be ourselves at all risks."

"All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome."

"In Wellington is every year assembled a National Council of men, which holds a session lasting several months... From that Council women are excluded. … Under these circumstances a National Council which largely represents the thinking and working women of the colony (and which, it may be remarked, costs the country nothing) becomes a necessity. I trust the day is not far distant … when the necessity for men's councils and women's councils, as such, will be swept away."

"The news is being flashed far and wide, and before our earth has revolved on her axis every civilized community within the reach of the electric wires will have received the tidings that civic freedom has been granted to the women of New Zealand. … It does not seem a great thing to be thankful for, that the gentlemen who confirm the laws which render women liable to taxation and penal servitude have declared us to be "persons"… We are glad and proud to think that even in so conservative a body as the Legislative Council there is a majority of men who are guided by the principles of reason and justice, who desire to see their womenkind treated as reasonable beings, and who have triumphed over prejudice, narrow-mindedness and selfishness."

"Is it right that your mother, your sister... should be classed with criminals and lunatics... ? Is it right that while the gambler, the drunkard, and even the wife-beater has a vote, earnest, educated and refined women are denied it?... Is it right... that a mother... should be thought unworthy of a vote that is freely given to the blasphemer, the liar, the seducer,and the profligate?"

"I am only too aware that I am open to Rees's Second Law of Quotation: "However sure you are that you have attributed a quotation correctly, an earlier source will be pointed out to you.""

"An analogous process I shall call Churchillian Drift...Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose or belligerent tone are, as if by osmosis, credited to Churchill. All humorous remarks obviously made by a female originated, of course, with Dorothy Parker. All quotations in translation, on the other hand, should be attributed to Goethe (with 'I think' obligatory)."

"My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw – which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them."

"These days when I see a child in Waitrose and smile and say, "Hello, are you going to visit your Mum in her sheltered accommodation when you grow up?" it provokes glistening eyes and hollow laughter. And if you pursue it with, "Or are you going to be a drug dealer?" it may result in a snub."

"We even copied the way the Americans walked, though Father Leonard didn't like that bit of admiration. He disapproved of rolling buttocks."

"But it was drama, high drama: fires at night, the fires that burned people's houses away; bombs fell and left exotically shaped fragments in the form of shrapnel. And we collected it and traded it. As long as we were not hurt -- and I wasn't -- life seemed wonderful."

""Would you like to go to New Zealand to do a commercial?" That's the sort of question an actor likes to hear from his agent in freezing mid -January."

"We are all quite capable of believing in anything as long as it's improbable."

"I am used to being mistaken for Miriam Margolyes; Private Eye noticed that, and once I was even taken for Gertrude Stein. But that was at Chelsea Flower Show where uncertainty of identity is in the air."

"Not everybody knows that looking at people in 'a funny way' is the commonest cause of sudden murder. I happen to know that because I read a Home Office brochure once."

"It is part of my duty as a decent member of my local hamlet to mow the grass in front of the church. It's a pleasant little task and mowing is a favorite activity of mine; it gives me a lot of pleasure to make the churchyard look tidy. I sometimes pause at the grave of someone or other and speculate what he might have been like when he was alive, but gravestones don't tell much."

"He told me he was having the time of his life and then fell to the floor unconscious. I didn't take this too personally, although he was not the first person to collapse while talking to me; to tell the truth it has happened quite often."

"Most of my ideas were rejected and I got used to it. One can get fond of almost anything, even rejection."

"Bob Holmes, the script editor, did laugh and filled his pipe so that he could create a smoke screen between us while he turned the idea down."

"Jim Acheson, our designer, told me I looked like his Auntie Wyn and I have never forgotten it. I wondered if it was the way I walked or wore my hat, but Jim just said that I had some indefinable air of an aunt. It was then I began to hope that one day I might play Lady Bracknell."

"It was no problem for me to say I came from another world and could go back and forth in time in my emphysemic old Tardis which was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Problem? For me who believed in Guardian Angels and was convinced that pigs were possessed by devils after their New Testament encounter with God's son? It was easy and I loved it."

"Playing Doctor Who came as a great surprise to me. I had no idea that I would enjoy it so much. All that was required of me was to be able to speak complete gobbledygook with conviction."

"Living in an institution, rumours of change can make life more bearable, and starting rumours can be a wonderful pleasure for those without much hope. The National Theatre was like that."

"My old skill at self-delusion overrode my doubts as I told myself that Dexter probably believed in me. I could believe anything then. I still can as long as it is improbable."

"The only imperfection in life then was that we didn't really have much money."

"About ten days later, it being the time of year when the National collected down and outs to walk on and understudy I arrived at the head office of the National Theatre in Aquinas Street in Waterloo."

"But we can't escape into the future like we can escape into the past. So those of us who are not certain of things, and there are an awful lot of us, often rush back to the past. And each one has a particular past he prefers to the present. Sometimes I feel that any past is preferable to the present."

"I've been pretty wary of street sweepers since, though it is true that since we left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism some sweepers are really quite dashing to glance at."