Ivor Gurney quotes

“There are strange hells within the minds war made...”
-- Ivor Gurney

Source : Ivor Gurney (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.178, Carcanet

#War Quotes #Mind Quotes #Strange Quotes

“In the mind of all the English soldiers there is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though slightly comtemptuous kindness - as to men who are going through a bad time as well as ourselves.”
-- Ivor Gurney

Source : Ivor Gurney, Robert Kelsey Rought Thornton (1991). “Ivor Gurney: collected letters”, Carcanet Pr

#Kindness Quotes #Hate Quotes #War Quotes

“A sense of beauty is every hindrance to a soldier; yet there would be no soldiers - or none such soldier had not men dead and living cherished and handed on the sacred fire.”
-- Ivor Gurney

Source : Ivor Gurney, Robert Kelsey Rought Thornton (1991). “Ivor Gurney: collected letters”, Carcanet Pr

#Men Quotes #Fire Quotes #Soldier Quotes

“The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.”
-- Ivor Gurney

Source : 1922 'The Songs I Had'.

#Song Quotes #Track Quotes

“A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.”

“No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.”

“Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.”

“This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of.”

“The university is our culture's assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values.”

Source : A. Bartlett Giamatti (1981). “The University and the Public Interest”, Atheneum Books

“The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.”

Source : A. E. Housman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of A. E. Housman (Illustrated)”, p.64, Delphi Classics

“If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude...”

Source : Marcus Manilius, A. E. Housman (2011). “Astronomicon”, p.19, Cambridge University Press

“You cannot have a good character today and at the same time have a small mind and a little heart. You cannot have a good character today and be merely a petty reformer.”

“I thought how lovely and how strange a river is...”

“Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.”