Skip to content

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show —
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

— Cecil Day-Lewis Requiem for the Living (1964)

Another quote →

Topics

More quotes by Cecil Day-Lewis

Tempt me no more, for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.

Tempt Me No More (1933)

Do not expect again a phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.

It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse—
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.

Where are the War Poets? (1943)

Hurry! We burn
For Rome’s so near us, for the phoenix moment
When we have thrown off this traveller’s trance
And mother-naked and ageless-ancient
Wake in her warm nest of renaissance.

Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say
Ask my song.

Is it far to go? (1963)

All Cecil Day-Lewis quotes →

You may also like

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

Basil of Caesarea

Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.

Morris West The Clowns of God (1981)

God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Rabindranath Tagore Fireflies (1928)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Cecil Day-Lewis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.