"Hymns are the poetry of the people."

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.”

“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.”

“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

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts t…"

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Literature1918–2008

#Human Nature

"I came to you a crossbearer on a stretcher and an outcast from humanity, and I went from you a conqueror of life."

— Halldór Laxness

Literature1902–1998

#Human Nature

"How does he do it? How does he master people without bluster or bullying? How does he make people fear him or love him, not in spite of his ruthlessness but because of it?"

— Orson Scott Card

Literature1951–2003

#love

"I am nothing but these people, and as an actor I’m always trying to call up lives and the reason I know these things as an actor is because I have the DNA of all these crazy people."

— Meryl Streep

Entertainment1949

#philosophy