Richard Aldington Quotes

A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise.

All nations teach their children to be "patriotic", and abuse the other nations for fostering nationalism.

I dream of silent verses where the rhyme glides noiseless as an oar.

Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility.

No man who has managed to keep out of an office can be called a failure in life.

Such shame is not even skin deep. And as to forgetting, surely, you know that is Woman's First and Greatest Art?

Cats are like donkeys and camels, they won't ever quite give in to human tyranny, they won't try to imitate the human soul.

We must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that "the churches" know more about "God" than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so.

By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a presence, a genius loci, a potency.

At night, the moon, a pregnant woman, walks cautiously over the slippery heavens.

I have sat here happy in the gardens, Watching the still pool and the reeds And the dark clouds. . . . But though I greatly delight In these and the water lilies, That which sets me nighest to weeping Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones, And the pale yellow grasses Among them.

I began to write what I called 'rhythms' ie unrhymed pieces with no formal metrical scheme where the rhythm was created by a kind if inner chant... Later I was told I was writing 'free verse' or Vers libre.

Millions of human vermin swarm sweating along the night-arched cavernous roads. (Happily rapid chemical processes will disintegrate them all.

How on earth did it come about that all the things denounced in the Gospels are violently defended by the Christian sects?