"I ought to warn you that my verse is of no interest to people who can think."

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.”

“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.”

Resonant Thoughts

"As conceived in this book, economics is the science of rational choice in a world─our world─in which resources are limited in relation to human wants. The task of economics, so defined, is to explore …"

— Richard Posner

Law1939

#mind

".. When an individual, e.g. higher forms of animals, thinks, it is always for his own advantage whether the resulting action or expression is favorable or not to the onlookers or observers."

— Isidro A. T. Savillo

Literature1959

#mind

"The events of January 6th were a faith-based initiative, and Trumpism is a Christian nationalist movement. Magical religious thinking is a virus, and QAnon is just its current mutation."

— Bill Maher

Entertainment1946

#mind

"I very firmly believe that what unites America today is infinitely more important than those things which divide us. We are united Americans — North, East, West, and South, both parties — in our desir…"

— Richard Nixon

Politics1965–1992

#truth