Quotes by Louis MacNeice

“Where skill will no longer languish nor energy be trammelled To competition and graft, Exploited in subservience but not allegiance To an utterly lost and daft System that gives a few at fancy pric...”

“Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears.”

“Though patriotism includes a sentimental, as it were a family, feeling for place, we can distinguish the ethical motive from the sentimental. At certain times in certain countries there has been a ...”

“I am not yet born; O hear me.Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the clubfooted ghoul come near me.”

“I am not yet born; forgive meFor the sins that in me the world shall commit, my wordsWhen they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,My treason engendered by traitors beyond me,My life when they...”

“O early one morning I walked out like Agag,Early one morning to walk through the fireDodging the pythons that leaked on the pavementsWith tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire.”

“Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrilsFrom Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake:Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen;Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake.”

“Politics: distrust all parties but consider capitalism must go.”

“If the term poet's poet means a poet whose virtuosity can be fully appreciated only by other poets, it may be applied to MacNeice. But if it were taken to imply that his work cannot be enjoyed by t...”

“The elegance in MacNeice's poetry is more one of sensuality now and less one of ingenuity, and the poems he is writing are the experiences of a lonely contemplative person, occupied with himself an...”

“The difference between loneliness and mere solitariness, after all, is that the lonely sensibility wants to be otherwise. There is a reaching out that never quite touches. In MacNeice’s best work, ...”