James Kenneth Stephen quotes:

Republic of the West, Enlightened, free, sublime, Unquestionably best Production of our time.

I saw God! Do you doubt it? Do you dare to doubt it? I saw the Almighty Man! His hand Was resting on a mountain!

Birthdays? yes, in a general way; For the most if not for the best of men: You were born (I suppose) on a certain day: So was I: or perhaps in the night: what then?

To see Good Tennis! What divine joy Can fill our leisure, or our minds employ? Let other people play at other things; The King of Games is still the Game of Kings.

straightway like a bell Came low and clear The slow, sad murmur of the distant seas

Will there never come a season Which shall rid us from the curse? Of a prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse: When the world shall cease to wonder At the genius of an Ass, And a boy's eccentric blunder Shall not bring success to pass: When mankind shall be delivered From the clash of magazines, And the inkstand shall be shivered Into countless smithereens: When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute, beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from Kipling And the Haggards Ride no more.

In short, if your body or mind Or your soul or your purse come to grief, You need only get drunk, and you'll find Complete and immediate relief.

The time comes when our hearts sink utterly; When we remember Deirdre and her tale, And that her lips are dust.

Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing more.

There were two good fellows I used to know. --How distant it all appears! We played together in football weather, And messed together for years: Now one of them's wed, and the other's dead So long that he's hardly missed Save by us, who messed with him years ago: But we're all in the old School List.