W.H. Davies Quotes

You cannot have a good character today and at the same time have a small mind and a little heart. You cannot have a good character today and be merely a petty reformer.

A good character today is shaped by greatness, greatness in vision, greatness in courage, greatness in insight, greatness in purpose and devotion.

May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.

Wilf: God bless the cactuses! The Doctor: That's cactI. Alien: And that's racist!

Yesterday love was such an easy game for you to play. But now let's face it, things are so much easier today. Let it be like yesterday.

Technology is, in the broadest sense, mind or intelligence or purpose blending with nature.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

an imitator is always a poor example.

No one can penetrate me. They only see what's in their own fancy, always.

Is there anything science should not try to explain? Science is knowledge and knowledge is power - power to do good or evil. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

I would rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 5 seconds.

If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.

We obviously need more love in the world. And we obviously need more compassion and understanding. Our leaders need to really address these issues properly now.

At the moment, in Britain we're facing such enormous cutbacks in education programs and music programs and art programs that you feel you are knocking your head against a brick wall.

I think in this country [UK] we could do with rather less political correctness and more straight talking across the board.

Doctor Who: You want weapons? We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself! (from Tooth and Claw in Season 2)

The establishment in Britain is certainly against the arts and against education. If something doesn't make a profit, it's invalid, and art doesn't make a profit in that sense.

There's nothing better than a party that turns into a death trap.

If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum.

The battles, the fights, the bruises, the bites. That's the way true love grows.

Arty farty, you'll never fool your Aunt, who knew you picked your nose and wet your pants.

Anything works, as long as you write it properly.

An audience shouldn't listen with complacency.

Fear is an instinct, like hunger or anger. We need it to help us survive, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. It lets us know whether we should fight or flee.

The Dutch look like a huge jar of marmalade.

Many billions of years will elapse before the smallest, youngest stars complete their nuclear burning and shrink into white dwarfs. But with slow, agonizing finality perpetual night will surely fall.

All you have to do is relax and feel your history, because it will never go away and there is no future without it.

There's one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection. I'm in orbit around a supernova. I'm burning up a sun just to say good bye.

I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.

Mathematics is universal. It's discovered by human beings, but the rules of mathematics are the same throughout the universe and the laws of the universe.

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.

Intolerance has been the curse of every age and state.

We need to think on a broader plane, we need to do more than we're doing.

I got that idea from being in India. I always like the chanting.

Then I came in twice a week - for my own enjoyment as well as to be a guide. And then we started to apply some of the splinters of the ideas back into the piece.

Yes - it's the same in any other work - the more you massage your thinking the more capable I believe you are of expanding how you go about things and learning.

Standing in the middle of nowhere, wondering how to begin. Lost between tomorrow and yesterday, between now and then.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

It's perseverance that's the key. It's persevering for long enough to achieve your potential.

Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground - not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.

To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

I'm more inclined to linger in the science pages of 'The Week' magazine. But my principle obsessions are still watching sitcoms and football.

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

If you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me

I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs.

If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear.

Life is so groovy when your record is hot.

Much like a subtle spider which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly on every side.