Making war or rebellion is messy, like eating soup off a knife.

How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.

Some Englishmen, of whom Kitchener was chief, believed that a rebellion of Arabs against Turks would enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat Turkey. Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy: and indicated its character and method. So they allowed it to begin.

November’s days are thirty: November’s earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths.... Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.

Making war or rebellion is messy, like eating soup off a knife.

A merely great intellect can produce prose, but not poetry, not one line.

As well as any bloom upon a flower I like the dust on the nettles, never lost Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.