Quotes from Richard Aldington

Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?

The casualty lists went on appearing for a long time after the Armistice - last spasms of Europe's severed arteries.

Just now I was thinking that I'd died and had to come to life again, had to build up a life myself. Only the new edifice has to be built with the ruins of the old. Or rather, I feel like a tree that has been blasted level with the ground, with only the roots still living. Some even of the roots are dead, some I have to kill, the rest have to grow again somehow.

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness, could make this goodly earth an earthly paradise. – Richard Aldington

How on earth did it come about that all the things denounced in the Gospels are violently defended by the Christian sects? But we must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that the churches know more about God than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so. (Sacrifice Post, Lt. Davison)

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He wore the black suit which he used for funerals, a form of social entertainment which greatly appealed to Mr. Judd since it combined dignity of emotion with solemn lessons on the dangers of existence in an under-policed country.

But if I'm useless only because I haven't been properly educated, is that my fault?

The only news he wanted to hear was that people had become a little sensible and decent and peace- ful; he disliked this Cup-Tie attitude, in which people took sides for the sake of excitement, and rooted for their team to win without any sense of responsibility. This passion for vicarious belligerence! Obviously neither of them really believed that anything unpleasant would happen to them, and the bogey of being stoned by strikers was only evoked for the sake of a little uncostly excitement.

There shall be no more gods; there shall be no more quiet and holy places of the earth; and the sea shall be filled with our dirty works. Your women shall breed like sows, and you shall work like robots. You shall value nothing for its own sake, but only for its market value. As for living, the machines will do that for you. In the morning you shall say, Would God it evening; and in the evening, Would God it were morning.

No man who has managed to keep out of an office can be called a failure in life.

By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a presence, a genius loci, a potency.

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility.

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks.

I dream of silent verses where the rhyme glides noiseless as an oar.

I looked at the world as God did when first He made it. I saw that it was good.

The god, September, has paused for a moment here, garlanded with crimson leaves. He held a branch of fruited oak. He smiled like Hermes the beautiful cut in marble.

The chimneys, rank on rank, cut the clear sky; the moon, with a rag of gauze about her loins, poses among them, an awkward Venus.

Love me, for I must depart.

All nations teach their children to be "patriotic", and abuse the other nations for fostering nationalism.

By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a presence, a genius loci, a potency.

Millions of human vermin swarm sweating along the night-arched cavernous roads. (Happily rapid chemical processes will disintegrate them all.)

How on earth did it come about that all the things denounced in the Gospels are violently defended by the Christian sects?

At night, the moon, a pregnant woman, walks cautiously over the slippery heavens.