Isaac Rosenberg Quotes

I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough.

I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself.

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way.

I never joined the army for patriotic reasons.

The darkness crumbles away It is the same old druid Time as ever.

The Immortals

I killed them, but they would not die.
Yea! all the day and all the night
For them I could not rest or sleep,
Nor guard from them nor hide in flight.

Then in my agony I turned
And made my hands red in their gore.
In vain - for faster than I slew
They rose more cruel than before.

I killed and killed with slaughter mad;
I killed till all my strength was gone.
And still they rose to torture me,
For Devils only die in fun.

I used to think the Devil hid
In women's smiles and wine's carouse.
I called him Satan, Balzebub.
But now I call him, dirty louse.

Nothing can justify war.

I despair of ever writing excellent poetry.

I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do.

Being by the nature of my upbringing, all my energies having been directed to one channel of activity, crippled from other activities and made helpless even to live.