105 Quotes by John Cowper Powys

He had never been a man who attracted women, and he exaggerated their coldness towards him. Indeed in regard to the love of women he had a physical humility that was almost a mania. One of the strongest holds that Mary had over him was the simple fact that she, a sweet-looking, intellectual girl, could be in love with him at all! Secretly John regarded himself as the most unlovable human creature then living in Glastonbury.

There was something about the man's abject humility that excited him in a way he could not have explained.

   Well! my best to ye both and so says Phyllis from us both. I think I enjoy life more not less now that old age has stopped all my naughty little ways!   Yours as ever      Jack the Vampire & Corpse Lover.

Up is infinite. Down is infinite. Pantheism, dualism, pluralism!

It may well be that what gives to the wind along that Wessex coast its indescribable mixture of vague sorrow and wild obscure joy comes from its passing, on its unpredictable path, the floating hair of so many love-lorn maidens and the wild-tossed beards of so many desolate old men.

I never have liked these here windy nights. These here nights be turble hummy and drummy to me pore head.

And when I do say to she: 'Bain't Prior Bog of Bumset as good a church-lord as any old Saint?' she's answer to I is allus the same: 'Bog be Bog and Bumset be Bumset,' she do say, 'but when thee do pray to They Above, 'tis a very different style of Holy Man thee dost need for thee's pass to Salvation!

Casual amorists have indeed no notion of the world-deep sensuality of united physical labour. More than anything else this can give to a man and a girl a mysterious unity.

Below the surface of the most civilised human beings, the hunger-lust darts and snaps like a fish, snatches and rends like a bird, growls like a wolf, snarls like a panther, buzzes like a hornet, bleats like a sheep and stamps like a bull; and there is nothing so aggravating to hungry stomachs as the sight of dirty plates pushed away from satisfied rival stomachs.