Explore Quotes by John Masefield

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.

I must go down to the sea again For the call of the running tide It's a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

But he has gone, A nation's memory and veneration, Among the radiant, ever venturing on, Somewhere, with morning, as such spirits will.

Humans consist of body, mind and imagination. Our bodies are faulty, our minds untrustworthy, but our imagination has made us remarkable.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, 3 hours in a seasick steamer, & after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak 3 times, & then be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Life is a long headache in a noisy street.

And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street, And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom come, And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth.

Success is the brand on the brow of the man who aimed too low.

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries.

The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.

Once in a century a man may be ruined or made insufferable by praise. But surely once in a minute something generous dies for want of it.

I have seen flowers come in stony places_x000D_And kind things done by men with ugly faces,_x000D_And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,_x000D_So I trust, too.

Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.

It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.

To most of us the future seems unsure. But then it always has been; and we who have seen great changes must have great hopes.