"Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station."

"In the Garden City Café with its murals on the wall Before a talk on "Sex and Civics" I meditated on the Fall."

"All I can say is that with age I find myself enjoying more and more the words and rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer. Apart from their meaning, they sound right and they are not talking down to us by being matey, and where they're a bit vague and archaic, that makes them grand and historic. The words give me time to meditate and pray; they are so familiar, they are like my birthplace, and I don't want them pulled down. We are all of us preservationists who have had the luck to come out of the womb and with all our faculties."

""I think the mystery of its winding drive gave me a respect for the system of hereditary land owing which I have never shaken off. (Rawsden Manor Wilts.)"

"History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side."

"Hymns are the poetry of the people."

"Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music."

"One mark of good verse is surprise."

"Phone for the fish-knives, Norman As Cook is a little unnerved; You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes And I must have things daintily served."

"No love that in a family dwells, No carolling in frosty air, Nor all the steeple-shaking bells Can with this single Truth compare— That God was man in Palestine And lives to-day in Bread and Wine."

"Within the human world I know Such goings-on could not be so, For human beings only do What their religion tells them to. [...] But all the same it’s strange to me How very full the church can be With people I don’t see at all Except at Harvest Festival."

"A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I Am too papistical, and High."

"He would have liked to say goodbye, Shake hands with many friends. In Highgate now his finger-bones Stick through his finger-ends.You, God, who treat him thus and thus, Say, "Save his soul and pray." You ask me to believe You and I only see decay."

"Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl, Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five: That old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl, Although he’s playing for Woking, can’t stand up to your wonderful backhand drive."

"Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament — you against me!"

"We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn."

"Oh shall I see the Thames again? The prow-promoted gems again, As beefy ATS Without their hats Come shooting through the bridge? And "cheerioh" and "cheeri-bye" Across the waste of waters die, And low the mists of evening lie And lightly skims the midge."

"Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray Of prunus and forsythia across the public way, For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence, Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.And a constant sound of flushing runneth from windows whereThe toothbrush too is airing in this new North Oxford air."

"And behind their frail partitions Business women lie and soak, Seeing through the draughty skylight Flying clouds and railway smoke.Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones, Lap your loneliness in heat, All too soon the tiny breakfast, Trolley-bus and windy street!"

"But I'm dying now and done for, What on earth was all the fun for? I am ill and old and terrified and tight."

"Simple and brave, his faith awoke Ploughmen to struggle with their fate; Armies won battles when he spoke, And out of Chaos sprang the state."

"The name of happiness is but a wider term for the unalloy'd conditions of the Pleasur of Life, attendant on all function, and not to be deny'd to th' soul, unless forsooth in our thought of nature spiritual is by definition unnatural."

"I know that if odour were visible as colour is, I'd see the summer garden aureoled in rainbow clouds."

"Seeking unceasingly for the First Cause of All, in question for what special purpose he was made, Man, in the unsearchable darkness, knoweth one thing: that as he is, so was he made; and if the Essence and characteristic faculty of humanity is our conscient Reason and our desire of knowledge, that was Nature's Purpose in the making of man."

"Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for thee any better melody in the April woods at dawn than what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awake o'night in his comfortless attic, might perchance be aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?"

"Man's Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho' she guide his highest flight heav'nward, and teach him dignity morals manners and human comfort, she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell."

"Beauty is the highest of all these occult influences, the quality of appearances that thru' the sense wakeneth spiritual emotion in the mind of man."

"So sweet love seemed that April morn, When first we kissed beside the thorn, So strangely sweet, it was not strange We thought that love could never change."

"I have loved flowers that fade, Within whose magic tents Rich hues have marriage made With sweet unmemoried scents: A honeymoon delight, A joy of love at sight, That ages in an hour My song be like a flower!"

"But I can tell — let truth be told — That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is nought to see, So delicate his motions be."

"Beauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God and Angel of his Presence thru' all creation."

"And now impatiently despairest, see How nought is changed: Joy's wisdom is attired Splended for others' eyes if not for thee: Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled: If they delite thee not, 'tis thou art dead."

"The evening darkens over After a day so bright, The windcapt waves discover That wild will be the night."

"Were I a cloud I'd gather My skirts up in the air, And fly I well know whither, And rest I well know where."

"Scatter the clouds that hide The face of heaven, and show Where sweet peace doth abide, Where Truth and Beauty grow."

"Behind the western bars The shrouded day retreats, And unperceived the stars Steal to their sovran seats. And whiter grows the foam, The small moon lightens more; And as I turn me home, My shadow walks before."

"I live on hope and that I think do all Who come into this world."

"Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?"

"Repudiation of pleasur is a reason'd folly of imperfection. Ther is no motiv can rebate or decompose the intrinsic joy of activ life, whereon all function whatsoever in man is based."

"The storm is over, the land hushes to rest: The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone, Is fallen back in the west."

"Awake! the land is scattered with light, and see, Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree."

"The broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield, And in her tranquil light Sleep falls on forest and field. See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep: The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep."

"When first we met we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master."

"And Reason kens he herits in A haunted house. Tenants unknown Assert their squalid lease of sin With earlier title than his own."

"Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake! The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break, It leaps in the sky."

"When Death to either shall come— I pray it be first to me."

"Angels’ song, comforting as the comfort of Christ When he spake tenderly to his sorrowful flock."

"Surely thy body is thy mind, For in thy face is nought to find, Only thy soft unchristened smile, That shadows neither love nor guile."

"The constellated sounds ran sprinkling on earth’s floor As the dark vault above with stars was spangled o’er."

"My delight and thy delight Walking, like two angels white, In the gardens of the night."