"Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry...about the country, the suburbs and the seaside...then there comes love...and increasingly, the fear of death."

John Betjeman Literature See all quotes by John Betjeman →

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“The test of an abstract picture, for me, is not my first reaction to it, but how long I can stand it hanging on the wall of a room where I am living.”

“Hymns are the poetry of the people.”

“Yes, I haven't had enough sex.”

“Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music.”

“Saint Pancras was a fourteen-year old Christian boy who was martyred in Rome in AD 304 by the Emperor Diocletian. In England he is better known as a railway station.”

“Ghastly Good Taste, or a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture.”

Resonant Thoughts

"THE OCTOBER COUNTRY …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid…"

— Ray Bradbury

Literature1920–2012

#mind

"On March 20, 1956, 10 P.M. a thought of a very remote possibility entered my mind, which I fear will never leave me again. Am I a spaceman? Do I belong to a new race on earth, bred by men from outer s…"

— Wilhelm Reich

Psychology1897–1957

#time

"The standard Christian conscience does not permit the believer to look upon the self and find beauty, goodness, natural kindness, strength. Self-knowledge is tainted with self-hatred. The rules of the…"

— Sam Keen

Philosophy1931–2025

#love

"Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general dis…"

— George Bernard Shaw

Literature1856–1950

#Human Nature