Louis MacNeice Quotes

… the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek …

In British tradition, the American elite expected the lower classes to fight their wars.

Alternate translation: Come brethren, if you have a mind to be ingrafted in the vine, It is a pity to see you lopped off in this manner From the stock. Reckon up the prelates in the very see of Peter; And in that order of fathers see which has succeeded which. This is the rock over which the proud gates of hell prevail not.

Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

I classify Sao Paolo this way: The Governor's Palace is the living room. The mayor's office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the back yard where they throw the garbage.

Most Bolton students were scions of the city's wealthiest families. My crewe stuck out like hooker at church. We werent part of their pampered, priveliged world, and many of our classmates were quick to remind us of that fact. Taunting the "boat kids" was practically a varsity sport.

Aristocracy is a relative thing. And there are plenty of out-of-the-way places where the son of an upholsterer is the arbiter of fashion and reigns over a court like any young Prince of Wales.

There are those who collect the refuse of the public streets, but in order to be received into the band it is necessary to have been born one of the Hereditary Confederacy of Superfluity Removers and Abandoned Oddment Gatherers.

I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop

Here we have bishops, priests, and deacons, a Censorship Board, vigilant librarians, confraternities and sodalities, Duce Maria, Legions of Mary, Knights of this Christian order and Knights of that one, all surrounding the sinner's free will in an embattled circle.

Gays seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order: no matter how far down the pecking order another group is, its members still feel superior to and have no problem picking on gays.

A Brahmin is not so much in need of education as a Chandala. If the son of a Brahmin needs one teacher, that of a Chandala needs ten.

When you have an economically unequal society, you end up with huge swaths of society that are disposable, basically.

Greatness of name, in the father, ofttimes helps not forth, but overwhelms the son: They stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth.

There's a segment of this world, there's a mind state that's permeated the intellectual consciousness of this world that comes from a certain type of people that looks at me and you and your average individual as a problem - like a blight on an otherwise potential paradise, something that needs to be cured.

Aristocrats have heirs; the poor have children; the rest keep dogs.

the less powerful group usually knows the powerful one much better than vice versa - blacks have had to understand whites in order to survive, women have had to know men - yet the powerful group can afford to regard the less powerful one as a mystery.

The Son of God came to seek us where we are in order that he might bring us to be with him where he is.

You are — truly your father’s son, Harry. . . .

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

That was always my experience-a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton .... However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.

The clergy, no less than the capitalist class, lives on the backs of the people, profits from the degradation, the ignorance and the oppression of the people.

In future we'll have a different type of rich and poor.

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of non pertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity.

Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, close, tighter, tighter around you... I see it and know it, but I cannot help you... I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a - woman.