Louis MacNeice quotes

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

All the people I know have been conditioned by snobbery.

Louis MacNeice

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 beyond me, My life when they murder by means of my Hands, my death when they live me.

Louis MacNeice

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 women ... involved in personal relationships ... susceptible to physical impressions...

Louis MacNeice

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.

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

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

Louis MacNeice

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

Louis MacNeice

Style without content is bad style.

Louis MacNeice

O early one morning I walked out like Agag, Early one morning to walk through the fire Dodging the pythons that leaked on the pavements With tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire.

Louis MacNeice

Then twangling their bibles with wrath in their nostrils
From Bonehill Fields came Bunyan and Blake:
"Laredo the golden is fallen, is fallen;
Your flame shall not quench nor your thirst shall not slake." (Louis MacNeice)

It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky, All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.

Louis MacNeice

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.

Louis MacNeice

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 moral urgency to be patriotic when the actual or ideal policy of a man's nation has been a sine qua non for his conscience. But to-day patriotism, in so far as it means subordination to a specifically national policy, is superannuated. This war, we assume, is not being fought-not by most of us-for any merely national end; we are fighting it, primarily and clearly, for our lives, and secondarily, and, alas! vaguely, for a new international order.

Louis MacNeice

I do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities.

Louis MacNeice

Man is an unhappy animal and one that can talk. If he was not unhappy, he would have nothing to talk about. But if he had nothing to talk about, he would be unhappy.

Louis MacNeice

Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.

Louis MacNeice

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

Louis MacNeice

Some day I shall write a novel and call it 'A Walking Tour in the Congo' or 'Thrills and Spills in Aeronautics'; but I keep this type of title as a last & mercenary resort.

Louis MacNeice

All experiment is made on a basis of tradition; all tradition is the crystallization of experiment.

Louis MacNeice

I am more proud of what distinguishes man from the animals than of what he has in common with them. (Louis MacNeice)

Louis MacNeice

Occupation: Irish Poet
Born: September 12, 1907
Died: September 3, 1963
Quotes count: 21
Wikipedia: Louis MacNeice

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