Quotes by Walter de la Mare

“Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, th...”

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts like a Chinese nest of boxes oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front in our ancestors, back and back until...”

“It was this mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together that made life the endless, changing and yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were really only ap...”

“Who said, 'All Time's delightHath she for narrow bed;Life's troubled bubble broken'? ---That's what I said.”

“We are *all* we are, and all in a sense we care to dream we are. And for that matter, anything outlandish, bizarre, is a godsend in this rather stodgy life. It is after all just what the old boy sa...”

“Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality.”

“ there anybody there?' said the Traveller,Knocking on the moonlit door;And his horse in the silence champed the grassesOf the forest's ferny floor.And a bird flew up out of the turret,Above the Tra...”

“God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.”

“When indeed you positively press your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.("Out Of The Deep")”

“Lear, Macbeth. Mercutio they live on their own as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever watched ...”

“Tell them I came, and no one answered,That I kept my word," he said.Never the least stir made the listeners,Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still houseFrom the...”

“That's why I've just gone on collecting this particular kind of stuff what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it just...”

“His brow is seamed with line and scar;His cheek is red and dark as wine;The fires as of a Northern starBeneath his cap of sable shine.His right hand, bared of leathern glove,Hangs open like an iron...”

“Science, I am told, is making great strides, experimenting, groping after things which no sane man has ever dreamed of before without being burned alive for it.”

“A poor old Widow in her weedsSowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;Not too shallow, and not too deep,And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.Up shone May, like gold, and soonGreen as an arbou...”

“It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.”

“Yes, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark.”

“Thinking is like a fountain. Once it gets going at a certain pressure, well, it almost impossible to turn it off. And, my hat! what odd things come up with the water!("Out Of The Deep")”

“Oh, pity the poor gluttonWhose troubles all beginIn struggling on and on to turnWhat's out into what's in.”

“Poor sleepers should endeavor to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative.("Out Of The Deep")”