John Betjeman Quotes

People's backyards are much more interesting than their front gardens, and houses that back on to railways are public benefactors.

On out deathbeds we're not going to regret all the work we didn't do. We're going to regret all the sex we didn't have!

Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.

And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait Because I have a luncheon date.

A whispering and watery Norfolk sound
Telling of all the moonlit reeds around.

I don't think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn't be.

Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry..about the country, the suburbs and the seaside ... then there come's love ... and increasingly; the fear of death.

Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.

Oh Wasn't it naughty of Smudges? Oh, Mummy, I'm sick with disgust. She threww me in front of the judges, And my silly old collar-bone's bust.

Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music..

Inexpensive Progress

Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
B

Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow.

Oh better far those echoing hells
Half-threaten'd in the pealing bells
Than that this 'I' should cease to be -

I have a Vision of the Future, chum. The workers flats in fields of soya beans tower up like silver pencils, score on score.

Soft and sun-warm, see her glide

Silver and ermine and red faces full of port wine.

Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.