Louis MacNeice Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Louis MacNeice

  Love, Glasses, Somewhere Else

  'Meeting Point'

  15 Copy quote

• World is suddener than we fancy it.

  Louis MacNeice

  World, Fancy, Ireland

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.51, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• 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, Spit

  Poems (1935) "Snow"

  7 Copy quote

• Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.

  Louis MacNeice

  'Autumn Journal' (1939) p. 49

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  'Bagpipe Music' (1938)

  9 Copy quote

• 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, Want, Tickets

  'Bagpipe Music' (1938)

  9 Copy quote

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

  Louis MacNeice

  Time, Garden, Gold

  'Sunlight on the Garden' (1938)

  8 Copy quote

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

  Louis MacNeice

  Music, Sound, Tails

  Louis Macneice, “Sunday Morning”

  6 Copy quote

• Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go.

  Louis MacNeice

  Party, Distrust, Capitalism

  "Twentieth Century Authors, a biographical dictionary of modern literature". Book by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, 1942.

  6 Copy quote

• A pharaoh's profile, a Krishna's grace, tail like a question mark.

  Louis MacNeice

  Cat, Grace, Tails

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.425, Faber & Faber

  13 Copy quote

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

  Louis MacNeice

  Dream, Rip, Gulls

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.42, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

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

  Louis MacNeice

  Humanity, Born, Freeze

  'Prayer Before Birth' (1944)

  8 Copy quote

• World is crazier and more of it than we think,
  Incorrigibly plural.

  Louis MacNeice

  Thinking, World

  'Snow' (1935)

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.147, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• 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, Autumn, Kissing

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Autumn Journal”, p.14, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Autumn Journal”, p.39, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Today I am so at home in Dublin, more than in any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me. But, as with Belfast it took me years to penetrate its outer ugliness and dourness, so with Dublin 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

  "The strings are false: an unfinished autobiography".

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Ghouls

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.134, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Government, Years

  'Bagpipe Music' (1938)

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Kings, Eye, Land

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.176, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Cities, Culture, Bud

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.177, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.94, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Order, Necks

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.91, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Louis MacNeice (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.259, Faber & Faber

  52 Copy quote

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

  Louis MacNeice

  Sorrow, Hawks, Faces

  'The British Museum Reading Room' (1941)

  4 Copy quote

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