Skip to content

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.

— John Betjeman Old Lights for New Chancels (1940)

Another quote →

Topics

Women

More quotes by John Betjeman

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

Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place.

New Bats in Old Belfries (1945)

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

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Continual Dew (1937)

Safe were those evenings of the pre-war world
When firelight shone on green linoleum,
I heard the church bells hollowing out the sky,
Deep beyond deep, like never-ending stars.

Summoned by Bells (1960)

All John Betjeman quotes →

You may also like

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

There is a Lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.

Thomas Ford

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.

Mahatma Gandhi

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Attribution

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