Great Throughts Treasury

"The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living."

"There are two thing you need for a jolly good hymn.The first is a set of words that expresses the mood or sentiment of the worshipper.The second-and perhaps even more important- is a good tune..with a simple popular melody."

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

"Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life."

"This was where London's failed Eiffel Tower stood. Watkins' Folly as it was called. Here on this Middlesex turf, and since then the site has become quite well-known."

"The sort of girl I like to see Smiles down from her great height at me."

"Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry ... about the country, the suburbs and the seaside. ... Then there come's love ... and increasingly, the fear of death."

"Yes, I haven't had enough sex."

"Where are the advertisements? Where the shopping arcade, the coal merchant and the parked cars? This is a part of the Metropolitan Railway that's been entirely forgotten. Beyond Aylesbury it lies in flat fields with huge elms and distant blue hills."

"We sat in the car park till twenty to one and now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn."