Jon > Jon's Quotes

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  • #1
    A.A. Milne
    “Hallo, Rabbit,” he said, “is that you?”
    "Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Rabbit, “and see what happens.”
    A. A. Milne

  • #2
    Philip Larkin
    “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
    They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

    But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
    Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another's throats.

    Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
    Get out as early as you can,
    And don't have any kids yourself.”
    Philip Larkin, High Windows

  • #3
    A.A. Milne
    “I might have known,” said Eeyore. “After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother!’. The Social Round. Always something going on.”
    A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

  • #4
    “Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder'.”
    Geoffrey Willans, Whizz for Atomms

  • #5
    A.A. Milne
    “And out floated Eeyore.
    "Eeyore!" cried everybody.
    Looking very calm, very dignified, with his legs in the air, came Eeyore from beneath the bridge.
    "It's Eeyore!" cried Roo, terribly excited.
    "Is that so?" said Eeyore, getting caught up by a little eddy, and turning slowly round three times. "I wondered."
    "I didn't know you were playing," said Roo.
    "I'm not," said Eeyore.
    "Eeyore, what are you doing there?" said Rabbit.
    "I'll give you three guesses, Rabbit. Digging holes in the ground? Wrong. Leaping from branch to branch of a young oak-tree? Wrong. Waiting for somebody to help me out of the river? Right. Give Rabbit time, and he'll always get the answer."
    "But, Eeyore," said Pooh in distress, "what can we--I mean, how shall we--do you think if we--"
    "Yes," said Eeyore. "One of those would be just the thing. Thank you, Pooh.”
    A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

  • #6
    A.A. Milne
    “We can’t all and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”
    A.A. Milne

  • #7
    Jerome K. Jerome
    “As we drew nearer we could see that the three men fishing seemed old and solemn-looking men. They sat on three chairs in the punt and watched intently their lines. And the red sunset threw a mystic light upon the waters and tinged with fire the towering woods and made a golden glory of the piled-up clouds. It was an hour of deep enchantment of ecstatic hope and longing. The little sail stood out against the purple sky the gloaming lay around us wrapping the world in rainbow shadows and behind us crept the night.

    We seemed like knights of some old legend sailing across some mystic lake into the unknown realm of twilight unto the great land of the sunset.

    We did not go into the realm of twilight we went slap into that punt where those three old men were fishing. We did not know what had happened at first because the sail shut out the view but from the nature of the language that rose up upon the evening air we gathered that we had come into the neighbourhood of human beings and that they were vexed and discontented.”
    Jerome K. Jerome

  • #8
    Philip Larkin
    “I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.”
    Philip Larkin

  • #9
    Jerome K. Jerome
    “There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.

    I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.

    That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be tow-lines that are a credit to their profession—conscientious, respectable tow-lines—tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to themselves. I say there may be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are. But I have not met with them.”
    Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

  • #10
    Jerome K. Jerome
    “Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.”
    Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel
    tags: humor

  • #11
    Philip Larkin
    “Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.”
    Philip Larkin

  • #12
    Donald E. Westlake
    “Zachary’s partner, a younger man with a moustache named Freedly— Well, no. The man was named Freedly. Zachary’s partner, a younger man named Freedly with a moustache— Zachary’s partner, a moustached younger man named Freedly— Freedly said, “Have you got the ring on you?”
    Donald E. Westlake, Why Me?

  • #13
    Philip Larkin
    “What will survive of us is love.

    - from A Writer
    Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings

  • #14
    T.S. Eliot
    “For I have known them all already, known them all—
    Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
    I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
    T.S. Eliot, T. S. Eliot Reading: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others

  • #15
    T.S. Eliot
    “We shall not cease from exploration
    And the end of all our exploring
    Will be to arrive where we started
    And know the place for the first time.”
    T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

  • #16
    P.G. Wodehouse
    “She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". ”
    P.G. Wodehouse

  • #17
    P.G. Wodehouse
    “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
    P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

  • #18
    P.G. Wodehouse
    “What ho!" I said.
    "What ho!" said Motty.
    "What ho! What ho!"
    "What ho! What ho! What ho!"
    After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.”
    Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

  • #19
    Don Marquis
    “personally my ambition is to get my time as a cockroach shortened for good
    behavior and be promoted to a revenue officer
    it is not much of a step up but i am humble”
    Don Marquis, The Best of Archy and Mehitabel

  • #20
    Don Marquis
    “i do not see why men
    should be so proud
    insects have the more
    ancient lineage
    according to the scientists
    insects were insects
    when man was only
    a burbling whatsit”
    Don Marquis

  • #21
    P.G. Wodehouse
    “There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
    P.G. Wodehouse

  • #22
    Humphrey Lyttelton
    “The history of popular music is littered with great partnerships. Rodgers had his Hammerstein, Lennon had his McCartney, and Lloyd Webber had… his photocopier…”
    Humphrey Lyttelton

  • #23
    J.R.R. Tolkien
    “Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!"

    A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye."

    A sword rang as it was drawn. "Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may."

    "Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!"

    Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. "But no living man am I!”
    J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

  • #24
    Don Marquis
    “it wont be long now it wont be long
    man is making deserts of the earth
    it wont be long now
    before man will have used it up
    so that nothing but ants
    and centipedes and scorpions
    can find a living on it
    ....
    what man calls civilization
    always results in deserts
    ....
    men talk of money and industry
    of hard times and recoveries
    of finance and economics
    but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
    for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
    getting the world ready for the conquering ant
    drought and erosion and desert
    because men cannot learn
    ....
    it wont be long now it wont be long
    till earth is barren as the moon
    and sapless as a mumbled bone”
    Don Marquis, Archy Does His Part

  • #25
    Don Marquis
    “you want to know
    whether i believe in ghosts
    of course i do not believe in them
    if you had known
    as many of them as i have
    you would not
    believe in them either”
    Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel

  • #26
    Don Marquis
    “a spider and a fly

    i heard a spider
    and a fly arguing
    wait said the fly
    do not eat me
    i serve a great purpose
    in the world

    you will have to
    show me said the spider

    i scurry around
    gutters and sewers
    and garbage cans
    said the fly and gather
    up the germs of
    typhoid influenza
    and pneumonia on my feet
    and wings
    then i carry these germs
    into households of men
    and give them diseases
    all the people who
    have lived the right
    sort of life recover
    from the diseases
    and the old soaks who
    have weakened their systems
    with liquor and iniquity
    succumb it is my mission
    to help rid the world
    of these wicked persons
    i am a vessel of righteousness
    scattering seeds of justice
    and serving the noblest uses

    it is true said the spider
    that you are more
    useful in a plodding
    material sort of way
    than i am but i do not
    serve the utilitarian deities
    i serve the gods of beauty
    look at the gossamer webs
    i weave they float in the sun
    like filaments of song
    if you get what i mean
    i do not work at anything
    i play all the time
    i am busy with the stuff
    of enchantment and the materials
    of fairyland my works
    transcend utility
    i am the artist
    a creator and demi god
    it is ridiculous to suppose
    that i should be denied
    the food i need in order
    to continue to create
    beauty i tell you
    plainly mister fly it is all
    damned nonsense for that food
    to rear up on its hind legs
    and say it should not be eaten

    you have convinced me
    said the fly say no more
    and shutting all his eyes
    he prepared himself for dinner
    and yet he said i could
    have made out a case
    for myself too if i had
    had a better line of talk

    of course you could said the spider
    clutching a sirloin from him
    but the end would have been
    just the same if neither of
    us had spoken at all

    boss i am afraid that what
    the spider said is true
    and it gives me to think
    furiously upon the futility
    of literature

    archy”
    Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel

  • #27
    Don Marquis
    “prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into”
    Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel

  • #28
    Don Marquis
    “and before i could argue him
    out of his philosophy
    he went and immolated himself
    on a patent cigar lighter
    i do not agree with him
    myself i would rather have
    half the happiness and twice
    the longevity

    but at the same time i wish
    there was something i wanted
    as badly as he wanted to fry himself

    From the lesson of the moth
    Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel

  • #29
    Omar Khayyám
    “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
    Omar Khayyám

  • #30
    John Betjeman
    “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!”
    John Betjeman



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