"Somebody once said that a wedding is a funeral where you can smell your own flowers. Well, that's a harsh judgement in my book. I prefer to see it as a sexual relationship that is recognised by the police."

"As is often the case a failed marriage led to a successful divorce. We split the house; I got the outside...... It was at that point where I made a promise to myself, I said I'm not going to get married again, I'm just gonna find a woman I don't like and give her everything."

"Do not go mental, and with that, goodnight."

"I was met with the poet’s greatest enemy; indifference."

"You can count on him. He'll always let you down."

"I always judge people by appearances; don't you anyway? I think clothes are important; that's where the nudist camp falls down."

"Here he is. All the way from Salford. He's not my cup of tea but you might like him."

"Cricket is an ancient pastime; it ripened sweetly, it has endured noblt."

"Cricket's all right in spite of the newspapers, but the trouble is that three quarters of us don't know how to use our own gifts."

"A game of cricket is at work from the first ball to the last in shaping an outline or design for itself. Sometimes the design degenerates into dullness and incompetence, but design there always is, and there is an interest even in the tracing of the course and impulse of its failures."

"At any rate, it would detract sadly from the richness of the game if deduction of character from a player's style was a forbidden pursuit, for undoubtedly the main reason why cricketers are remembered for years, for decades, after the heroes of other sports are forgotten is that they set the impress of character, apart from technical batting or bowling, on the minds of those who watched them, and whether that cricket-character falsely represented the real man is, in the last analysis, unimportant."

"He was certainly one of that company who tried to raise descriptions of matches from mere reporting to literature."

"One of the things that is his inability to contact him. He's never had a 'phone. And before the days when mobile 'phones were popular you had to 'phone his mam....."

"And His that gentle voice we hear, Soft as the breath of even."

"He came in tongues of living flame"

"My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are! And when your man is down, how bold you are! Of charity how oddly scant you are! How Lang O Lord, how full of Cantuar!"

"Poetry . . . has nothing to do with facts, though everything to do with truth."

"Patient, dramatic, serious, genial, From over to over the game goes on, Weaving a pattern of hardy perennial, Civilisation under the sun."

"Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen Or the golden-haired sons of kings, Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves, Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail"

"He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water Whose ripples spread from the heart of the sea, He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter Broadcast on the swift river."

"And have they fixed the where and when? And shall Trelawney die? Here's twenty thousand Cornish men Shall know the reason why!"

"Intent on one great love, perfect, Requited and for ever, I missed love's everywhere Small presence, thousand-guised."

"In rose with petals soft as air I bind for you the tides and fire — the death that lives within the flower, oh, gladly love, for you I bear."

"It is possible, in the interests of a false religion (such as Nationalism or Fascism) to avert one's eyes from the plain fact of human brotherhood; but the fact stubbornly remains, and we ignore it at our peril. We are all in the same boat, and we live in the shadow of a common doom."

"he was undoing the wooden box, and he took out the silver sword. "This is the best of my treasures," he said. "It will bring me luck. And it will bring you luck, because you gave it to me. I don't tell anybody my name - it is not safe. But because you gave me the sword and I didn't borrow it, I will tell you." He whispered. "It is Jan.""

"Disobey Defy Take your own time Fly"

"He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship. Pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion, was all that he laid to heart. He was true to nothing, for he was not true to himself."

"A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. … Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, but they had his estate."

"Buckingham was a sated man of pleasure, who had turned to ambition as a pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself with architecture and music, with writing farces and with seeking for the philosopher's stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secret negotiation and a Dutch war."

"Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."

"There are few have Dana's fortune, to have God and gold togather."

"Kisses are but like sands of gold and silver, found upon the ground which are not worth much themselves but as they promise a mine near too be dig'd."

"A mans fame and hayre grow most after death, and are both equally uselesse."

"The first gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw."

"Make my breast Transparent as pure crystal, that the world, Jealous of me, may see the foulest thought My heart holds."

"Ay, now the Plot thickens very much upon us."

"What a Devil is the Plot good for, but to bring in fine things?"

"The blackest Ink of Fate, sure, was my Lot, And, when she writ my Name, she made a blot."

"A Lady that was drown'd at Sea, and had a wave for her Winding sheet."

"All these threatening storms, which, like impregnate Clouds, hover o'er our heads, will (when they once are grasp'd but by the eye of reason) melt into fruitful showers of blessings on the people."

"I drink, I huff, I strut, look big and stare; And all this I can do, because I dare."

"She that would raise a noble love must find Ways to beget a passion for her mind; She must be that which she to the world would seem, For all true love is grounded on esteem: Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart Than all the crooked subtleties of art."

"The world's a wood, in which all lose their way, Though by a different path each goes astray."

"Methinks, I see the wanton houres flee, And as they passe, turne back and laugh at me."

"The world is made up, for the most part, of fools and knaves, both irreconcileable foes to truth."

"O! what a prodigal have I been of that most valuable of all possessions — Time!"

"We might well call this short Mock-play of ours A Posie made of Weeds instead of Flowers; Yet such have been presented to your noses, And there are such, I fear, who thought 'em Roses."

"Our Poets make us laugh at Tragœdy, And with their Comoedies they make us cry."

"Why, Sir, when I have anything to invent, I never trouble my head about it, as other men do; but presently turn over this Book, and there I have, at one view, all that Perseus, Montaigne, Seneca's Tragedies, Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's lives, and the rest, have ever thought upon this subject: and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is done."