Louis MacNeice famous quotes

Time was away and somewhere else, There were two glasses and two chairs And two people with one pulse.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Love #People

Up the Rebels, To Hell with the Pope, And God Save--as you prefer--the King or Ireland. The land of scholars and saints: Scholars and saints my eye, the land of ambush, Purblind manifestoes, never-ending complaints
-- Louis MacNeice

#Eye #Rebel #Saint

I am not yet born; O hear me. Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Prayer #Fear

I am not yet born; O fill me With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing
-- Louis MacNeice

#Prayer #Humanity

I was the rector's son, born to the anglican order, Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor; The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Son #Poor #Marble

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Thinking #World

The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold
-- Louis MacNeice

#Time #Garden #Gold

a fortress against ideas and against the Shuddering insidious shock of the theory-vendors The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Men #Beast #Aggression

There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces The guttural sorrow of the refugees.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Sorrow #Refugee

You know the worst: your wills are fickle, Your values blurred, your hearts impure And your past life a ruined church-- But let your poison be your cure.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Suicide #Heart #Past

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium, It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums. It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections, Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Country #Apathy #Laziness

Why do we like being Irish? Partly because It gives us a hold on the sentimental English As members of a world that never was, Baptized with fairy water
-- Louis MacNeice

#Giving #Water #World

It's no go the merry-go-round, it's no go the rickshaw All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Greed

blind wantons like the gulls who scream And rip the edge off any ideal or dream.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Dream #Rip #Blind

A city built upon mud; A culture built upon profit; Free speech nipped in the bud, The minority always guilty. Why should I want to go back To you, Ireland, my Ireland?
-- Louis MacNeice

#Culture #Guilty #Free Speech

And I envy the intransigence of my own Countrymen who shoot to kill and never See the victim's face become their own Or find his motive sabotage their motives.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Envy #Killing #Motive

Down the road someone is practicing scales, The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails
-- Louis MacNeice

#Music #Musician

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Thinking #World #Tangerines

World is suddener than we fancy it.
-- Louis MacNeice

#World #Fancy #Ireland

September has come, it is hers Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace. So I give her this month and the next Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already So many of its days intolerable or perplexed But so many more so happy. Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls Dancing over and over with her shadow Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls And all of London littered with remembered kisses.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Wall #Kissing #Autumn

A pharaoh's profile, a Krishna's grace, tail like a question mark.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Cat #Grace #Tails

All that I would like to be is human, having a share in a civilized, articulate and well-adjusted community where the mind is given its due but the body is not distrusted
-- Louis MacNeice

#Community #Mind #Body

In my own prejudice.. I would have of a poet...whose worlds would not be too esoteric..fond of talking....capable of pity and laughter..appreciative of womem..involved in personal relationships...susceptible to physical impressions
-- Louis MacNeice

#Laughter #Talking #Prejudice

Dublin was a glorious name in our family and had pleasurable associations of violence …Today I am so at home in Dublin, more than in any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me … it took me years to see through its soft charm to its bitter prickly kernel – which I quite like too.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Home #Years #Cities

I am not yet born; Forgive me For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, My treason engendered by traitors beyound me, My life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Mean #Thinking #Hands

I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Humanity #Born

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Stones #Killing #Kill Me

Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.
-- Louis MacNeice

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Fall #Blow #Glasses

Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Party #Distrust #Capitalism

None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives. Are self deceivers, but the worst of all Deceits is to murmur 'Lord, I am not worthy' And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.
-- Louis MacNeice

#Wall #Lying #Heart