101 Quotes by John Masefield

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.

The luck will alter and the star will rise.

From '41 to '51I was my folk's contrary son;I bit my father's hand right throughAnd broke my mother's heart in two.

Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road.

Life's battle is a conquest for the strong; The meaning shows in the defeated thing.

In the dark room where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her.

Life, a beauty chased by tragic laughter.

In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.