Poems List

For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did. [stanza 3]The library was most inviting:The books upon the crowded shelvesWere mainly of our private writing:We kept a school and taught ourselves. [stanza 15]From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,Theres nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends. [stanza 22]You do retain the song we set,And how it rises, trips and scans?You keep the sacred memory yet,Republicans? Republicans?[stanza 36]

Remote and ineffectual don.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor.

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.

Swans sing before they die -- t'were no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing.

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge...

My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.

I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age -- which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday.

That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.

There's always something fishy about the French.

I've sometimes thought of marrying, and then I've thought again.

Work is more fun than fun.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

The higher the building the lower the morals.