W.H. Davies Quotes

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.

One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.

The pleasures of love are for those who are hopelessly addicted to another living creature.

Villains are a lot of fun. My villains have a lot of tongue-in-cheek. They are sometimes conscious of and a little bit gleeful of their villainy.

The very concept of solid ground is a myth. The galaxy itself is adrift.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

Democracy will be dead by 1950.

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.

By 1960 work will be limited to three hours a day.

Sport and life is about losing. It's about understanding how to lose.

It's not just about a coach telling you what to do and just following it unthinkingly.

It's about lessons for life. It's not just about winning either.

As a youngster, I enjoyed sport and my ambition was to be a great sportsman.

Deeds are males, words females are.

If aught can teach us aught, Affliction's looks, Making us pry into ourselves so, near, Teach us to know ourselves, beyond all books, Or all the learned schools that ever were.

I am notorious. I will go down in history as another Lady Hamilton.

What more than madness reigns, when one short sitting many hundreds drains.

I want the BBC to be a mass market public service broadcaster still funded by the licence fee... and the licence fee is more durable than many people in the commercial sector believe.

This is the slowest, yet the daintiest sense; For ev'n the ears of such as have no skill, Perceive a discord, and conceive offence; And knowing not what's good, yet find the ill.

The BBC should not have a cheerleader. It should have somebody who runs the organisation in the interests of the public and that should be a chairman.

To me, Venice and Ocean Park were gaiety. I had not been allowed to go to those things as a youngster.

We may conceive an hope that the next generation will in tongue and heart and every way else become English; so as there will be no difference or distinction but the Irish sea betwixt us.

For millennia mankind has believed that nothing can come out of nothing. Today we can argue that everything has come out of nothing. Nobody has to pay for the universe. It is the ultimate free lunch.

The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are?

I love having debates with people when they are debates but some people, you just can't. Some people shouldn't be given the oxygen.

The anthropic principle is an unfortunate name as it implies something about humanity.

To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously.

We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.

As an individual, I think you have to find your own path. I like the simplicity and purity of Hinduism and many elements of Buddhism. These are all means of accessing spiritual energy.

There's a lot to do when you're a kid - spiders to catch, girls to poke in the eye - stuff to be getting on with.

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

Rudolf Valentino looks very much alive and he looks up ladies dresses as they sadly pass him by.

End up blowing all of his wages for the week, all for a cuddle and a peck on the cheek.

Inactivity and deprivation of all accustomed stimulus is not rest; it is a preparation for the tomb

Be careful about the advice you give, especially to your children.

Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so.

I dont drive around London much. Any journey around Islington involves hundreds of speed bumps that seem to tear the bottom of your car off.

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.

The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

In my collection, to me at least, the theatre of the past lives again and those long-dead playwrights and actors have in me an enthralled audience of one, and I applaud them across the centuries.

The clerisy are those who seek, and find, delight and enlargement of life in books. The clerisy are those for whom reading is a personal art.

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

I think of the author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, 'I will tell you a story' and then he passes the hat.

The thing I'd really like to see is the old London Bridge, with all the old buildings around it like Shakespeare's Globe. I'd like to walk along that. Don't worry, I won't get drunk and fall in.