Conditions Quote by Henry David Thoreau

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor…

— Wilfred Owen

“[Poetry] is a field where England can take on all challengers.”

— Patrick Leigh Fermor

“Some kings of England could not read or write; some died of illness which would keep us in bed only for a week or…

— P.J. Sidey

Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred…

— Robert Falcon Scott

I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I…

— T. S. Eliot

“Thomas Cromwell is now about fifty years old. He has a labourer's body, stocky, useful, running to fat. He has black hair, greying now,…

— Hilary Mantel

I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets;…

— Charlotte Bronte

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

— Robert Graves

“Cromwell, suppose you’d been away from England for seven years? If you’d been like a knight in a story, lying under an enchantment? You…

— Hilary Mantel

“Why has not England a great mythology? Our folklore has never advanced beyond daintiness, and the greater melodies about our country-side have all issued…

— E. M. Forster

Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in…

— Oscar Wilde

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

— Robert Frost