50 quotes
Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
My heart always warms to people who do not come to see me, especially Americans, to whom it seems to be more of an effort.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
Last Poems (1922)
The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. [...] and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933)
Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,
The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.
More Poems (1936)
We now to peace and darkness
And earth and thee restore
Thy creature that thou madest
And wilt cast forth no more.
More Poems (1936)
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.
The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism (1921)
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am I.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)
The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone.
More Poems (1936)
Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)