Quotes from Richard Aldington

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.

The gulls are coming up from the sea, crying, and drifting across like pieces of mist, like fragments of white cloth. They turn their heads and peer as they pass.

There is a silence, a truce; the old earth-gods retreat, sullen, beaten and disconsolate; London has beaten them, swallowed, engulfed their territory, crushing their flowers into mud.

We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret. We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those lines of pitiable crosses, those solitary mounds, those unknown graves, and turn to live our lives out as we may.

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill.

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill.

Such shame is not even skin deep. And as to forgetting, surely, you know that is Woman's First and Greatest Art?