"“Oh, life!” I silently petitioned the future... if I do finally decide to marry G. and have a family — and I’m not absolutely certain, yet, that I really want to do either — please grant that I have only daughters; I’m afraid, in the world as it is, to have a son. Our generation is condemned, condemned, and the League, and all that it stands for, is only a brittle toy in the hands of ruthless, primeval forces!”"

"All that a pacifist can undertake — but it is a very great deal — is to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate."

"It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men’s attitude to women, and in women’s attitude to themselves."

"Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity."

"Meek wifehood is no part of my profession; / I am your friend, but never your possession."

"And some to Meccah turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin."

"The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder, The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder, O Master of the world, the Persian Dawn. That hour, O Master, shall be bright for thee: Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea, The braves who fight thy war unsheathe the sabre, The slaves who work thy mines are lashed to labour, For thee the waggons of the world are drawn— The ebony of night, the red of dawn!"

"I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading."

"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go Always a little further; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow Across that angry or that glimmering sea,White on a throne or guarded in a cave There lies a prophet who can understand Why men were born: but surely we are brave, Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand."

"When the great markets by the sea shut fast All that calm Sunday that goes on and on: When even lovers find their peace at last, And Earth is but a star, that once had shone."

"I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep."

"When even lovers find their peace at last, And Earth is but a star, that once had shone."

"A ship, an isle, a sickle moon — With few but with how splendid stars."

"West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides I must go Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the young Star captains glow."

"The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving."

"We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage: And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, We Poets of the proud old lineage Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why."

"I have tried to write the exact truth as I saw and see it about both myself and other people, since a book of this kind has no value unless it is honest... It is not by accident that what I have written constitutes, in effect, the indictment of a civilisation."

"I care not if you bridge the seas, Or ride secure the cruel sky, Or build consummate palaces Of metal or of masonry. But have you wine and music still, And statues and a bright-eyed love, And foolish thoughts of good and ill, And prayers to them who sit above?"

"O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, Read out my words at night, alone: I was a poet, I was young."

""Long ago there lived a rich merchant who, besides possessing more treasures than any king in the world, had in his great hall three chairs, one of silver, one of gold, and one of diamonds. But his greatest treasure of ail was his only daughter, who was called Catherine. One day Catherine was sitting in her own room when suddenly the door flew open, and in came a tall and beautiful woman... 'Catherine... which would you rather have a happy youth or a happy old age?... Then Catherine thought... ‘If I say a happy youth, then I shall have to suffer all the rest of my life. No, I will bear trouble now, and have something better to look forward to.’ So she looked up and said : ‘ Give me a happy old age.’...‘ So be it,’ said the lady..."

"When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans. To explain the reason for this egotistical view of history’s greatest disaster, it is necessary to go back a little... p. 17"

"The fact that his highly respected old friend regarded the presence of women at Oxford as in no way remarkable undoubtedly caused him to revise his opinion on the whole subject of the higher education of daughters."

"He was like a little boy let loose in a toy shop, uncertain which of the attractive treasures to pick up first."

"He was a dark-haired, fresh-faced boy of twenty-one or twenty-two, who adopted the pose that everything was a joke and nothing really mattered."

"All good designers are difficult men or they could not be good designers; I think everybody at the table was more or less aware of that. We set ourselves to mollify the great man, and I say that with sincerity. A great man he was, a great designer, and a superlative engineer. But not an easy man to deal with. No."

"She did not understand what all that meant, but it was evidently something very near his heart, and so she said, "How splendid!""

"If you're going to make your life in a new country you should go before you're twenty-five. After that you start to get associations, little grooves and anchors, that make it difficult to change."

"Whatever the little man showed him or explained, the designer did nothing but grunt. This was one of his more offensive techniques; he would stand in silence listening to a halting explanation and then grunt, a grunt expressing an ill-tempered scepticism or plain disbelief."

"Success did not thrill him in the least. He regarded a success merely as a convenient platform from which to plan a further advance."

"She said, "When you've seen all the new places you've got no more new places to see. And anyway, one new place is just like another new place. . . . I used to like meeting new people every trip - and I still do. But those things, meeting new people, seeing new places, they aren't everything. And while you go on in that sort of life you can't have any real friends or any real home. Because you're never there . . .""

"They sat by the lake for a couple of hours, talking, finding out about each other."

"A wiser man than I once said that an unusual man is apt to look unusual. In my department we seek for original thinkers, for the untiring brain that pursues its object by day and by night. If the untiring brain refuses to leave its quest to attend to such matters as the neat arrangement of collar and tie or to removing food stains from its waistcoat, I do not greatly complain."

"She recognised in Mr Honey a man of moods, capable of deep depression; all geniuses, she had read, were men like that."

"Personal unpleasantness always upset his work; he could not think clearly if his mind was full of hard things that had been said about him, and he liked thinking clearly. Rows frightened him; he would go to considerable lengths to avoid them."

"You can't go through life sitting on the fence. You've got to make decisions, and sometimes you're pretty sure to make them wrong."

"It has been said that an engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound; if that be so, we were certainly engineers."

"People believe what they want to believe."

"Environment has its effect on everybody, and for a time it had a numbing effect on him, preventing him from thinking clearly."

"He was one of that great class of Englishmen who love their wives and trust them unquestioningly with their money and their honour, but are apt to hedge a little over their motor-cars."

"Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years … according to some people she became a Sufi. Others say she entered a closed order. Others imagine her footloose and anonymous, travelling the wide world. In any event, no trace of her seems to survive - apart from the writing she left behind."

"Andrew Motion, published in The Times, 30 October, 2004"

"His agitation was subsiding; already he was becoming aware that he had not got it in him to make these men believe that what he said was true. He had had so much of this in the past; he was accustomed to being right and being disbelieved on vital issues. It was what happened to him; other people could put across their convictions and win credence, but he had never been able to do that. Now it was happening again."

"Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes — not yet, anyhow."

"Thinking we were safe-insanity! We went in to make love. All the same Idiots to trust the little hotel bedroom. Then in the gloom... ...And who does not know that pair of shutters With all the awkward hook on them All screeching whispers?"

"— All this sitting about in cafés to calm down Simply wears me out. And their idea of literature! The idiotic cut of the stanzas; the novels, full up, gross. I have lived it, and I know too much. My café nerves are breaking me With black, exhausting information."

"Airline stewardesses are not chosen for their repellent qualities, and Miss Corder was a very charming girl."

"For many years the actress had been out of touch with the hard realities of life. All her working life had been spent in the facile world of honky-tonk, of synthetic emotion and of phoney glamour. Now she was getting a glimpse into a new world, a world of hard, stark facts, a world in which things had to be exactly right or people would be killed. She was beginning to perceive that little insignificant men like Mr Honey were the brains behind that world."

"He smiled his irresistible smile, but Dora found it highly resistible."

"It must be someone collecting for charity. Respectable women never call the family for any other reason."

"Lucky Australians! They can go on sleeping for another seven hours and stil pass as early risers."