A. L. Rowse Quotes

Bound as our lives are to the tyranny of time, it is through what we know of history that we are delivered from our bonds and escape - into time.

This filthy twentieth century. I hate its guts.

History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.

I would never wound a cat's feelings, no matter how downright aggressive I might be to humans.

Walking is the favorite sport of the good and wise.

A little group of thatched cottages in the middle of the village had an orchard attached; and I remember well the peculiar purity of the blue sky seen through the white clusters of apple blossom in spring. I remember being moonstruck looking at it one morning early on my way to school. It meant something for me; what, I couldn't say. It gave me such an unease at heart, some reaching out towards perfection such as impels men into religion, some sense of the transcendence of things, of the fragility of our hold on life.

One might regard architecture as history arrested in stone.

I do not wish to die- There is such contingent beauty in life: The open window on summer mornings Looking out on gardens and green things growing, The shadowy cups of roses flowering to themselves- Images of time and eternity- Silence in the garden and felt along the walls.

If there is any honor in all the world that I should like, it would be to be an honorary Jewish citizen.