The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (86 page)

It is a mistake to suppose that God is only, or even chiefly, concerned

with religion.

In R. V. C. Bodley In Search of Serenity (1955) ch. 12

Christianity is the most materialistic of all great religions.

Readings in St John's Gospel vol. 1 (1939) introduction

20.9 A. S. J. Tessimond =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1902-1962

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,

Offer no angles to the wind.

They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes

Less than themselves.

Cats (1934) p. 20

20.10 Margaret Thatcher =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1925-

We have to get our production and our earnings into balance. There's no

easy popularity in what we are proposing, but it is fundamentally sound.

Yet I believe people accept there is no real alternative.

Speech at Conservative Women's Conference, 21 May 1980, in Daily Telegraph

22 May 1980

A triumphant Prime Minister declared "Rejoice, rejoice" last night....

"Let us congratulate our armed forces and the Marines," she added.

On recapture of South Georgia, 25 Apr. 1982, Daily Telegraph 26 Apr. 1982

In church on Sunday morning--it was a lovely morning and we haven't had

many lovely days--the sun was coming through a stained glass window and

falling on some flowers, falling right across the church. It just occurred

to me that this was the day I was meant not to see. Then all of a sudden

I thought, "there are some of my dearest friends who are not seeing this

day."

Television interview, 15 Oct. 1984, after the Brighton bombing, in Daily

Telegraph 16 Oct. 1984

We're going to be rather lucky to be living at a time when you get the

turn of the thousand years and we really ought to set Britain's course for

the next century as well as this.... Yes, I hope to go on and on.

Television interview, 11 May 1987, in Independent 12 May 1987

I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

In Observer 27 Jan. 1980

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

In Observer 4 Apr. 1989

Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you tonight in my red chiffon evening

gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved...the Iron Lady of

the Western World! Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes--if that is how they

wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way

of life.

Speech at Finchley, 31 Jan. 1976, in Sunday Times 1 Feb. 1976

I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said

straight out I was. And I am.

Speech to British Jewish Community, 21 July 1983, in M. Mc Fadyean & M.

Renn Thatcher's Reign (1984) p. 114

We shall not be diverted from our course. To those waiting with bated

breath for that favourite media catch-phrase, the U-turn, I have only this

to say. "You turn if you want; the lady's not for turning."

Speech at Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, 10 Oct. 1980, in The

Times 11 Oct. 1980

Let me make one thing absolutely clear. The National Health Service is

safe with us.

Speech at Conservative party Conference, 8 Oct. 1982, in The Times 9 Oct.

1982

The Prime Minister [Mrs Thatcher] said yesterday that she liked Mr

Gorbachev--"we can do business together"--and that she was cautiously

optimistic for detente and world peace in the new year.

The Times 18 Dec. 1984

We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the

oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

Speech to American Bar Association in London, 15 July 1985, in The Times

16 July 1985

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions.

He had money as well.

Television interview, 6 Jan. 1986, in The Times 12 Jan. 1986

Mrs Margaret Thatcher informed the world with regal panache yesterday that

her daughter-in-law had given birth to a son. "We have become a

grandmother," the Prime Minister said.

The Times 4 Mar. 1989

There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and

there are families.

Woman's Own 31 Oct. 1987

20.11 Sam Theard and Fleecie Moore =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Let the good times roll.

Title of song (1946)

20.12 Diane Thomas =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Romancing the stone.

Title of film (1984)

20.13 Dylan Thomas =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1914-1953

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town

corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices

I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether

it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it

snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954) p. 5

Years and years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in

Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the

harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves

that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours, and we

chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before

the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we

rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.

A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954) p. 11

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Collected poems (1952) "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"

After the first death, there is no other.

Deaths and Entrances (1946) "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of

a Child in London"

It was my thirtieth year to heaven

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood

And the mussel pooled and the heron

Priested shore.

The morning beckon.

Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Poem in October"

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail

With its horns through mist and the castle

Brown as owls

But all the gardens

Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall vales

Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.

There could I marvel

My birthday

Away but the weather turned around.

Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Poem in October"

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Fern Hill"

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Fern Hill"

The land of my fathers [Wales]. My fathers can have it.

In Adam Dec. 1953

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

18 Poems (1934) "The Force that through the Green Fuse drives the Flower"

Light breaks where no sun shines;

Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart

Push in their tides.

18 Poems (1934) "Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines"

Dylan talked copiously, then stopped. "Somebody's boring me," he said, "I

think it's me."

Rayner Heppenstall Four Absentees (1960) ch. 16

Dylan himself once defined an alcoholic as a man you don't like who drinks

as much as you do.

Constantine Fitzgibbon Life of Dylan Thomas (1965) ch. 6

Portrait of the artist as a young dog.

Title of book (1940); cf. James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man (1916)

Too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the

position of the artists of Wales. There is only one position for an

artist anywhere: and that is, upright.

Quite Early One Morning (1954) pt. 2 "Wales and the Artist"

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;

Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,

Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;

These five kings did a king to death.

25 Poems (1936) "The Hand that Signed the Paper Felled a City"

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,

And famine grew, and locusts came;

Great is the hand that holds dominion over

Man by a scribbled name.

25 Poems (1936) "The Hand That Signed the Paper Felled a City"

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

25 Poems (1936) "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." Cf. Romans 6:9

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town,

starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched

courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow,

black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 1

Mr pritchard: I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them.

Mrs ogmore-pritchard: And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its

shoes.

Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 16

Alone until she dies, Bessie Bighead, hired help, born in the workhouse,

smelling of the cowshed, snores bass and gruff on a couch of straw in

a loft in Salt Lake Farm and picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to

put on the grave of Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she

wasn't looking and never kissed her again although she was looking all the

time.

Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 19

Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden

to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And

babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far

away. You're looking up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor

little milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you should

be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't life a terrible thing,

thank God?

Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 30

Mae rose cottage: I'm fast. I'm a bad lot. God will strike me dead.

I'm seventeen. I'll go to hell.

Second voice: She tells the goats.

Mae rose cottage: You just wait. I'll sin till I blow up!

Second voice: She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats

champ and sneer.

Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 78

20.14 Edward Thomas =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1878-1917

Out in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Last Poems (1918) "Out in the Dark"

If I should ever by chance grow rich

I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,

Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,

And let them all to my elder daughter.

Poems (1917) "If I Should Ever By Chance"

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Poems (1917) "Early One Morning"

Yes; I remember Adlestrop--

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

Poems (1917) "Adlestrop"

As well as any bloom upon a flower

I like the dust on the nettles, never lost

Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

Poems (1917) "Tall Nettles"

I have come to the borders of sleep,

The unfathomable deep

Forest where all must lose

Their way, however straight

Or winding, soon or late;

They can not choose.

Poems (1917) "Lights Out"

20.15 Gwyn Thomas =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1913-

There are still parts of Wales where the only concession to gaiety is a

striped shroud.

Punch 18 June 1958

20.16 Francis Thompson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1859-1907

Wake! for the Ruddy Ball has taken flight

That scatters the slow Wicket of the Night;

And the swift Batsman of the Dawn has driven

Against the Star-spiked Rails a fiery smite.

"Wake! for the Ruddy Ball has Taken Flight" (parody of Edward Fitzgerald)

in J. C. Squire Apes and Parrots (1929) p. 173

The fairest things have fleetest end,

Their scent survives their close:

But the rose's scent is bitterness

To him that loved the rose!

Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Daisy"

She went her unremembering way,

She went and left in me

The pang of all the partings gone,

And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul

Was sad that she was glad;

At all the sadness in the sweet,

The sweetness in the sad.

Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Daisy"

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,