Top 67 John Masefield Quotes
#1. Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.
John Masefield
#2. 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
John Masefield
#3. Success is the brand on the brow of the man who aimed too low.
John Masefield
#4. Beauty you lifted up my sleeping eye And filled my heart with longing with a look.
John Masefield
#5. Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.
John Masefield
#6. Man's body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable.
John Masefield
#7. Love is a flame to burn out human wills,
Love is a flame to set the will on fire,
Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.
John Masefield
#8. On the long dusty ribbon of the long city street,
The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet,
With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea
And-the great movement changes-the pageant passes me.
John Masefield
#9. Men in a ship are always looking up, and men ashore are usually looking down.
John Masefield
#10. Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.
John Masefield
#11. The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.
John Masefield
#12. The three foundations of judgement: Bold Design, Constant Practice, and Frequent Mistakes.
John Masefield
#13. There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.
John Masefield
#14. When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I pray, Be good to me, O Lord.
John Masefield
#15. Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.
John Masefield
#16. 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.
John Masefield
#17. I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide, is a wild call and a clear call, that cannot be denied!
John Masefield
#18. Man with his burning soul Has but an hour of breath To build a ship of Truth In which his soul may sail- Sail on the sea of death. For death takes toll Of beauty, courage, youth, Of all but Truth.
John Masefield
#19. Humans consist of body, mind and imagination. Our bodies are faulty, our minds untrustworthy, but our imagination has made us remarkable.
John Masefield
#20. All the great things of life are swiftly done, Creation, death, and love the double gate. However much we dawdle in the sun We have to hurry at the touch of Fate.
John Masefield
#22. Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain,
And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.
John Masefield
#23. And may we find when ended is the page, Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.
John Masefield
#24. Christmas ought to be brought up to date," Maria said. "It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.
John Masefield
#25. O lovely lily clean, O lily springing green, O lily bursting white, Dear lily of delight, Spring in my heart agen That I may flower to men.
John Masefield
#26. Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
John Masefield
#29. I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too.
John Masefield
#30. God dropped a spark down into everyone, And if we find and fan it to a blaze, It'll spring up and glow, like
like the sun, And light the wandering out of stony ways.
John Masefield
#31. All ye that pass by!
While we least think it he prepares his Mate.
Mate, and the King's pawn played, it never ceases,
Though all the earth is dust of taken pieces.
John Masefield
#32. Lord, give to me who are old and rougher
The things that little children suffer,
And let keep bright and undefiled
The young years of the little child.
John Masefield
#34. To most of us the future seems unsure. But then it always has been; and we who have seen great changes must have great hopes.
John Masefield
#35. When Life knocks at the door no one can wait,
When Death makes his arrest we have to go.
John Masefield
#36. Life's battle is a conquest for the strong; The meaning shows in the defeated thing.
John Masefield
#37. Most roads lead men homewards, My road leads me forth
John Masefield
#38. I have seen the Lady April bringing
the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the
soft warm April rain.
John Masefield
#39. It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries.
John Masefield
#40. In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder.
John Masefield
#41. Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.
John Masefield
#42. All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.
John Masefield
#43. But Time and Tide and Buttered Eggs wait for no man.
John Masefield
#44. It may be that we cease; we cannot tell.
Even if we cease, life is a miracle.
John Masefield
#45. And he who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street, And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom come, And she who gives a baby birth Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth.
John Masefield
#46. Each one could be a Jesus mild,
Each one has been a little child,
A little child with laughing look,
A lovely white unwritten book;
A book that God will take, my friend,
As each goes out at journey's end.
John Masefield
#47. State are not made, nor patched; they grow;
Grow slow through centuries of pain,
And grow correctly in the main;
But only grow by certain laws,
Of certain bits in certain jaws.
John Masefield
#49. But he has gone, A nation's memory and veneration, Among the radiant, ever venturing on, Somewhere, with morning, as such spirits will.
John Masefield
#50. Off Cape Horn there are but two kinds of weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind.
John Masefield
#51. The Lord who gave us Earth and Heaven
Takes that as thanks for all He's given.
The book he lent is given back
All blotted red and smutted black.
John Masefield
#52. I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth; / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.
John Masefield
#53. The corn that makes the holy bread By which the soul of man is fed, The holy bread, the food unpriced, Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.
John Masefield
#55. It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?
John Masefield
#56. Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French.
John Masefield
#57. Once in a century a man may be ruined or made insufferable by praise. But surely once in a minute something generous dies for want of it.
John Masefield
#58. I must go down to the sea ... to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by ...
John Masefield
#59. The social states of human kinds Are made by multitudes of minds, And after multitudes of years A little human growth appears Worth having, even to the soul Who sees most plain it's not the whole.
John Masefield
#61. My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails.
John Masefield
#62. 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.
John Masefield
#63. So shall I fight, so shall I tread,
In this long war beneath the stars;
So shall a glory wreathe my head,
So shall I faint and show the scars,
Until this case, this clogging mould,
Be smithied all to kingly gold.
John Masefield
#64. What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?
John Masefield
#65. People who leave their own time out of their work cannot be surprised if their time fails to find them interesting.
John Masefield
#67. Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road.
John Masefield
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