"Fashion—a word which knaves and fools may use, Their knavery and folly to excuse. To copy beauties, forfeits all pretence To fame—to copy faults, is want of sense."

"How fading are the joys we dote upon! Like apparitions seen and gone. But those which soonest take their flight Are the most exquisite and strong,— Like angels’ visits, short and bright; Mortality ’s too weak to bear them long."

"....but I use the word (devotion) in a greater latitude so as to comprehend under it faith, hope, love, fear, trust, humility, submission, honour , reverence, adoration, thanksgiving in a word all that duty which we owe to God."

"He had employed his mind chiefly on works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens."

"By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung."

"In yonder Grave a Druid lies Where slowly winds the Stealing Wave! The Year's best Sweets shall duteous rise To deck its Poet's sylvan Grave!"

"But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide No sedge-crown'd sister now attend, Now waft me from the green hill's side Whose cold turf hides the buried friend!"

"'T was sad by fits, by starts 't was wild."

"With eyes up-raised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sate retired, And from her wild sequestered seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul."

"Love of peace, and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away."

"When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung."

"Fill'd with fury, rapt, inspired."

"O Music! sphere-descended maid, Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!"

"For when thy folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant hours, and elves Who slept in buds the day, And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and lovelier still, The pensive pleasures sweet Prepare thy shadowy car."

"By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there!"

"Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part; Nature in him was almost lost in Art."

"To fair Fidele's grassy tomb Soft maids and village hinds shall bring Each opening sweet of earliest bloom, And rifle all the breathing spring."

"How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest!"

"Each lonely scene shall thee restore; For thee the tear be duly shed; Beloved till life can charm no more, And mourn'd till Pity’s self be dead."

"In numbers warmly pure and sweetly strong."

"Well may your hearts believe the truths I tell: 'T is virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell."

"Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat, With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum."

"Read Homer once, and you can read no more; For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need."

"Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well."

"There's no such thing in Nature; and you'll draw A faultless monster which the world ne’er saw."

"I would have walked on the water But I wasn't fully insured. And the BMA sent a writ my way With the very first leper I cured."

"Now God killed John Lennon and he let Barry Manilow survive, But the good Lord blessed little Adrian Mitchell with the fastest cock alive."

"When I am sad and weary When I think all hope has gone When I walk along High Holborn I think of you with nothing on"

"May I borrow your wheelbarrow? — I didn't lay down my life in World War II so that you could borrow my wheelbarrow"

"And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the same basis he decided to take over the television too, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing of all was that this was just the beginning."

"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

"I was run over by the truth one day. Ever since the accident I've walked this way"

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was Gotcha!"

"My wardrobe is like a garden oh, I don't know how I've got the gall! my wardrobe is just like a wardrobe — it's not like a garden at all!"

"So thin, and yet... so thick."

"I am one of a team of Iraqi weapons inspectors currently travelling through the United Kingdom under very difficult conditions searching for weapons of mass distraction."

"You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out, You take the human being and you twist it all about So scrub my skin with women Chain my tongue with whisky Stuff my nose with garlic Coat my eyes with butter Fill my ears with silver Stick my legs in plaster Tell me lies about Vietnam."

"He wanted me to beat him up! It was an open invitation! Late at night he picked me up — an act of open provocation!"

"A five pence fine is right and proper — and to sum up my defence it was his fault he came a cropper: CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE!"

"It first was a rumour dismissed as a lie but then came the evidence none could deny: a double page spread in the Sunday Express — The Russians are running the DHSS!"

"Hitching up the M11 coming back from a Dexys gig got picked up 'bout half eleven by this bloke in a funny wig"

"I don't want a fortnight on the Costa del Sol Don't wanna go to Bognor — it's a plague-ridden hole and it don't fit in with my ideology... Down the Adriatic to the Vlora bay Twenty pints of Fosters and I'm away 'Cos now I know just where I wanna be: Albania — that's the place for me!"

"No agony, no ecstacy, no pleasure and no pain — so exquisitely uninteresting you drive your wife insane The TV is your oracle, the newspapers your guide and your shiny little vehicle is your passion and your pride You've done the same things every day for nigh on forty years and in your ludicrous routines you hide your worthless fears On the blandest boat in Boredom you are captain of the crew and every time I eat vegetables it makes me think of you."

"Lovers lie around in it Broken glass is found in it Grass I like that stuff"

"Learn to read slow, all other graces Will follow in their proper places."

"Whoe’er she be, That not impossible she, That shall command my heart and me."

"Where’er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye, In shady leaves of destiny."