Roy Campbell Quotes

I hate ‘Humanity’ and all such abstracts: but I love people. Lovers of ‘Humanity’ generally hate people and children, and keep parrots or puppy dogs.

Translations, like wives, are seldom faithful if they are in the least attractive.

Giraffes!—a People Who live between the earth and skies, Each in his own religious steeple, Keeping a light-house with his eyes.

He shouldered high his voluntary Cross, Wrestled his hardships into forms of beauty, And taught his gorgon destinies to sing.

Burn, with Athens and with Rome, A sacred city of the mind.

Write with your spade, and garden with your pen, Shove your couplets to their long repose. And type your turnips down the field in rows.

Of all the clever people round me here I most delight in Me—Mine is the only voice I care to hear, And mine the only face I like to see.

You praise the firm restraint with which they write— I’m with you there, of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right, But where’s the bloody horse?

South Africa, renowned both far and wide For politics and little else besides.