Best 69 quotes of John Masefield on MyQuotes

All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.

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.

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.

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.

And may we find when ended is the page, Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.

But he has gone, A nation's memory and veneration, Among the radiant, ever venturing on, Somewhere, with morning, as such spirits will.

Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.

Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.

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.

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.

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.

God warms his hands at man's heart when he prays.

Heaven to me's a fair blue stretch of sky, Earth's jest a dusty road.

Humans consist of body, mind and imagination. Our bodies are faulty, our minds untrustworthy, but our imagination has made us remarkable.

I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.

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.

I have seen the Lady April bringing the daffodils, Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.

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.

In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

I must go down to the sea again For the call of the running tide It's a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

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.

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.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, 3 hours in a seasick steamer, & after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak 3 times, & then be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

It may be that we cease; we cannot tell. Even if we cease, life is a miracle.

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries; I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills, And April's in the West wind, and daffodils.

It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries.

Life, a beauty chased by tragic laughter.

Life is a long headache in a noisy street.

Life's battle is a conquest for the strong; The meaning shows in the defeated thing.

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.

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.

Love is a flame to set the will on fire

Man cannot call the brimming instant back; Time's an affair of instants spun to days; If man must make an instant gold, or black, Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways. Life may be duller for an instant's blaze. Life's an affair of instants spun to years, Instants are only cause of all these tears.

Man's body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable.

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.

Men in a ship are always looking up, and men ashore are usually looking down.

Most roads lead men homewards, My road leads me forth

My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails.

Off Cape Horn there are but two kinds of weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.

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.

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.

So death obscures your gentle form, So memory strives to make the darkness bright; And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, Part of the island till the planet ends, My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, War with this force, and breathe, and am its king.

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.