Andrew Lang Quotes

Andrew Lang shares grand, poetic musings that lift the spirit with fresh wonder.

15 quotes

There's a joy without canker or cark, There's a pleasure eternally new, 'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that's ancient and blue.

#1
Here's a pot with a cot in a park In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died and were changed into two Bright birds that eternally flew Through the boughs of the may, as they sang; 'T is a tale was undoubtedly true In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

#2
The windy lights of Autumn flare; I watch the moonlit sails go by; I marvel how men toil and fare, The weary business that they play! Their voyaging is vanity, And fairy gold is all their gain, And all the winds of winter cry, 'My Love returns no more again.'

#3
Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.
An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.
Either a wise man will not go into bunkers, or, being in, he will endure such things as befall him with patience.
Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?
Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha.
If the wild bowler thinks he bowls, Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled, They know not, poor misguided souls, They, too, shall perish unconsoled.
O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts - for support rather than for illumination.
. . . had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all.
Of all the minor creatures of mythology, fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable.
Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.
I don't think the idea of homosexuality is really taboo any more. Our culture is evolving. This is an exciting time to be living.