Quotes from Louis MacNeice

Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice.

I am at home in Dublin, more than in any other city.

You can't express emotion without giving information.

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

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 forever,But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

September has come, it is hers Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace. So I give her this month and the next Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already So many of its days intolerable or perplexed But so many more so happy. Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls Dancing over and over with her shadow Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls And all of London littered with remembered kisses.

World is suddener than we fancy it.

None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives. Are self deceivers, but the worst of all Deceits is to murmur 'Lord, I am not worthy' And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.

Corner Seat Suspended in a moving night The face in the reflection train Looks at first sight as self-assured As your own face - But look again: Windows between you and the world Keep out the cold, keep out the fright; Then why does your reflection seem So lonely in the moving night?

Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears

All that I would like to be is human, having a share in a civilized, articulate and well-adjusted community where the mind is given its due but the body is not distrusted

And at this hour of the day it is no good saying 'Take away this cup'; Having helped to fill it ourselves it is only logic That now we should drink it up.

I cannot drug my life with the present moment; The present moment may rape--but all in vain-- The future, for the future remains a virgin Who must be tried again.

Self-assertion more often than not is vulgar, but a live and vulgar dog who keeps on barking is better than a dead lion, however dignified.

The argument was wilful, The alternatives untrue, We need no metaphysics To sanction what we do Or to muffle us in comfort From what we did not do.

Rows of books around me stand, Fence me in on either hand; Through that forest of dead words I would hunt the living birds -- So I write these lines for you Who have felt the death-wish too, All the wires are cut, my friends Live beyond the severed ends.

The poet is a maker, not a retail trader.

But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden.

Let us thank God for valour in abstraction For those who go their own way, will not kiss The arse of law and order nor compound For physical comfort at the price of pride

Let the old Muse loosen her stays Or give me a new Muse with stockings and suspenders And a smile like a cat, With false eyelashes and finger-nails of carmine And dressed by Schiaparelli, with a pill-box hat. ... Give me a houri but houris are too easy, Give me a nun; We'll rape the angels off the golden reredos Before we're done.

Thus were we weaned to knowledge of the Will That wills the natural world, but wills us dead.

Their ghosts are gagged, their books are library flotsam, Some of their names - not all - we learnt in school But, life being short, we rarely read their poems, Mere source-books now to point or except a rule, While those opinions which rank them high are based On a wish to be different or on lack of taste.

If war is the test of reality, than all poetry is unreal; but in that case unreality is a virtue.

If war is the test of reality, then all poetry is unreal; but in that case unreality is a virtue.