Quote

a fortress against ideas and against the Shuddering insidious shock of the theory-vendors The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.

Louis MacNeice

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Louis MacNeice
Age: 55 †
Born: 1907
Born: September 12
Died: 1963
Died: September 3
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Belfast
Ireland
Frederick Louis MacNeice
Littles
Insidious
Shuddering
Ideas
Monster
Vendors
Little
Aggression
Crammed
Men
Toys
Aggregate
Beast
Fortress
Shock
Fortresses
Sardine
Monsters
Tilt
Sardines
Theory
Crumbling
Troy

More quotes by Louis MacNeice

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Why do we like being Irish? Partly because It gives us a hold on the sentimental English As members of a world that never was, Baptized with fairy water
Louis MacNeice
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Up the Rebels, To Hell with the Pope, And God Save--as you prefer--the King or Ireland. The land of scholars and saints: Scholars and saints my eye, the land of ambush, Purblind manifestoes, never-ending complaints
Louis MacNeice
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None of our hearts are pure, we always have mixed motives. Are self deceivers, but the worst of all Deceits is to murmur 'Lord, I am not worthy' And, lying easy, turn your face to the wall.
Louis MacNeice
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There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces The guttural sorrow of the refugees.
Louis MacNeice
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It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium, It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums. It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections, Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
Louis MacNeice
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It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppetWork your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.
Louis MacNeice
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A city built upon mud A culture built upon profit Free speech nipped in the bud, The minority always guilty. Why should I want to go back To you, Ireland, my Ireland?
Louis MacNeice
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And I envy the intransigence of my own Countrymen who shoot to kill and never See the victim's face become their own Or find his motive sabotage their motives.
Louis MacNeice
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A pharaoh's profile, a Krishna's grace, tail like a question mark.
Louis MacNeice
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I am not yet born Forgive me For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, My treason engendered by traitors beyound me, My life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.
Louis MacNeice
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I am not yet born O fill me With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing
Louis MacNeice
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Time was away and somewhere else, There were two glasses and two chairs And two people with one pulse.
Louis MacNeice
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You know the worst: your wills are fickle, Your values blurred, your hearts impure And your past life a ruined church-- But let your poison be your cure.
Louis MacNeice
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World is suddener than we fancy it.
Louis MacNeice
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I am not yet born O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity.
Louis MacNeice
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Today I am so at home in Dublin, more than in any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me. But, as with Belfast it took me years to penetrate its outer ugliness and dourness, so with Dublin it took me years to see through its soft charm to its bitter prickly kernel - which I quite like too.
Louis MacNeice
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I was the rector's son, born to the anglican order, Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.
Louis MacNeice
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I am not yet born O hear me. Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.
Louis MacNeice
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Down the road someone is practicing scales, The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails
Louis MacNeice
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All that I would like to be is human, having a share in a civilized, articulate and well-adjusted community where the mind is given its due but the body is not distrusted
Louis MacNeice