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Louis MacNeice

39 quotes

• “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 (1907–1963) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay (Oxford University Press, 1938), ch. xi, p. 198

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

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview, in Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1950), p. 889

• “By a high star our course is set, Our end is Life. Put out to sea.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: First published in The London Magazine (c. 1963)

• “For the last blossom is the first blossom And the first blossom is the best blossom And when from Eden we take our way The morning after is the first day.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “His father gave him a box of truisms Shaped like a coffin, then his father died; The truisms remained on the mantelpiece.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Holidays should be like this, Free from over-emphasis, Time for soul to stretch and spit Before the world comes back on it.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Turf-stacks", st. 2 (1932)

• “Something of glass about her, of dead water, Chills and holds us, Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair This despair of crystal brilliance.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Circe", l. 1 (1931)

• “Down the road someone is practising scales, The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails, Man’s heart expands to tinker with his car For this is Sunday morning, Fate’s great bazaar.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Sunday Morning", l. 1 (1933)

• “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 (1907–1963) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Snow", st. 2 (1935)

• “The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its net of gold, When all is told We cannot beg for pardon.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Sunlight on the Garden", st. 1 (1937)

• “Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Upon the decks they take beef-tea Who are so free, so free, so free, But down the ladder in the engine-room (Doom, doom, doom, doom) The great cranks rise and fall, repeat, The great cranks plod with their Assyrian feet To match the monotonous energy of the sea.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw, All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow. Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python, Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with the heads of bison.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Some now are happy in the hive of home, Thigh over thigh and a light in the night nursery, And some are hungry under the starry dome And some sit turning handles.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Spider, spider, spin Your register and let me sleep a little, Not now in order to end but to begin The task begun so often.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 prices Their fancy lives, While ninety-nine in the hundred who never attend the banquet Must wash the grease of ages off the knives.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And all of London littered with remembered kisses.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And we who have been brought up to think of "Gallant Belgium" As so much blague Are now preparing again to essay good through evil For the sake of Prague; And must, we suppose, become uncritical, vindictive, And must, in order to beat The enemy, model ourselves upon the enemy, A howling radio for our paraclete.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To-night we sleep On the banks of Rubicon—the die is cast; There will be time to audit The accounts later, there will be sunlight later And the equation will come out at last.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Under the coffered gilt the court historian Turns the mothy silks that time has left him.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Court Historian" (1927)

• “So they were married—to be the more together— And found they were never again so much together, Divided by the morning tea, By the evening paper, By children and tradesmen’s bills.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Les Sylphides", st. 5 (Summer 1939)

• “I have no liking to defer To capitalist or bureaucrat; As for your Social Register You know what you can do with that!”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ballade in a Bad Temper" (August 1940)

• “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 (1907–1963) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The British Museum Reading Room", l. 4 (July 1939)

• “And under the totem poles—the ancient terror— Between the enormous fluted Ionic columns There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces The guttural sorrow of the refugees.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Time was away and somewhere else, There were two glasses and two chairs And two people with the one pulse (Somebody stopped the moving stairs): Time was away and somewhere else.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Meeting Point", st. 1 (April 1939)

• “Crumbling between the fingers, under the feet, Crumbling behind the eyes, Their world gives way and dies And something twangs and breaks at the end of the street.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Dèbâcle", st. 5 (September 1940)

• “In my childhood trees were green And there was plenty to be seen.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Autobiography", l. 1 (September 1940)

• “The dark was talking to the dead; The lamp was dark beside my bed.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am not yet born; O fill me With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me. Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, Otherwise kill me.”

  Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1907–1963) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Traveller's Return", in Horizon (February 1941) Reprinted in David Pierce Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader (Cork University Press, 2000)