John Masefield Quotes

The days that make us happy make us wise.

— John Masefield

“Life, a beauty chased by tragic laughter.”

— John Masefield

“The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.”

— John Masefield

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

“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

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

— John Masefield

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

— John Masefield

Beauty you lifted up my sleeping eye And filled my heart with longing with a look.

— John Masefield

“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

“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

“But Time and Tide and Buttered Eggs wait for no man.”

— John Masefield

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

“( ... ) It,s hard not to be able. There, look there!/ I cannot get the movement nor the light;/Sometimes it almost makes a man despair/To try and try and never get it right./Oh, if I could -oh, if I only might,/I wouldn,t mind what hells I,d have to pass,/Not if the whole world called me fool and ass.
Dauber (A poem). John Masefield. 1916. London William Heinemann”

— John Masefield

“Therefore, go forth, companion: when you find
No highway more, no track, all being blind,
The way to go shall glimmer in the mind.
Though you have conquered Earth and Charted Sea
And planned the courses of all Stars that be,
Adventure on, more wonders are in Thee.
Adventure on, for from the littlest clue
Has come whatever worth man ever knew;
The next to lighten all men may be you ...”

— John Masefield

“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

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

— John Masefield

“The luck will alter and the star will rise.”

— John Masefield

“Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.”

— John Masefield

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

— John Masefield

“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

“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

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

— John Masefield

Success is the brand on the brow of the man who aimed too low.

— John Masefield

“The three foundations of judgement: Bold Design, Constant Practice, and Frequent Mistakes.”

— John Masefield

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

— John Masefield

“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

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

— John Masefield

“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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“His face was filled with broken commandments.”

— John Masefield

“People who leave their own time out of their work cannot be surprised if their time fails to find them interesting.”

— John Masefield

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

— John Masefield

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

— John Masefield

“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

Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French.

— John Masefield

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

— John Masefield

“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

“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.”

— John Masefield

“My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails.”

— John Masefield

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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.”

— John Masefield

“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