“These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.”

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. M...”

“Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes. O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate.”

“Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.We laughed, knowing that better men would come,And greater wars: whe...”

“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Abo...”

“The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language...everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug...”

“But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hangingfrom the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the raindescending on black earth in early spring. ...”

“Life is but a dream for the dead.”

“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought--some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans...”

“The ring which you are holding, my friend, is identical to that one. I had it cut according to the model of the king's ring, and damascened in Spain. The original is still in the Escorial; it would...”

“Why have the English remained to English? Throughout India's history conquerors have come from elsewhere, and all of them --- Turk, Arab, Hun, Mongol, Persian --- have become Indian. If --- when --...”