“One mark of good verse is surprise.”

—  John Betjeman

Radio Talk. BBC Radio 4 (2 August 1978)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One mark of good verse is surprise." by John Betjeman?
John Betjeman photo
John Betjeman 30
English poet, writer and broadcaster 1906–1984

Related quotes

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac photo

“The tone in which an Englishman expresses anger would, in Italy, be only a mark of surprise.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

As quoted in David Booth, The principles of English composition (1831), p. 8.

Michael Parenti photo

“It may come as a surprise to some academics, but there is a marked relationship between economic power and political power.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Preface to the Sixth Edition, p. viii
Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition

Muhammad photo

“One who recites ten verses (ayat) of the Qur’an every night will not be counted amongst the negligent ones (Ghafilin); and one who recites fifty verses (ayat) will be written as those who remember Allah (Dhakirin); and one who recites one hundred verses (ayat) will be written down as the obedient and worshipper of Allah”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Qanitin
Thawabul A’mal, Page 232
Shi'ite Hadith

Larry Niven photo

“One mark of a good officer, he remembered, was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: Ringworld (1970), p. 152

“The basic line in any good verse is cadenced… building it around the natural breath structures of speech.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

"Reflections and Remarks on Human Life", VI: Right and Wrong, published in Works: Letters and Miscellanies of Robert Louis Stevenson -- Sketches, Criticisms, Etc. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwe7px (1895), p. 628.
Context: It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.

T.S. Eliot photo

“No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job…. Poetry.. remains one person talking to another…. no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

The Music of Poetry (24 February 1942) the third W. P. Ker memorial lecture delivered in the University of Glasgow

Ausonius photo

“I've never written for a fasting man;
A taste of wine is good before my verse.
But sleep is better than a little wine,
For when sleeping one thinks my songs are dreams.”
Jejunis nil scribo: meum post pocula si quis<br/>legerit, hic sapiet.<br/>Sed magis hic sapiet, si dormiet: et putet ista<br/>somnia missa sibi.

Ausonius (310–395) poet

Jejunis nil scribo: meum post pocula si quis
legerit, hic sapiet.
Sed magis hic sapiet, si dormiet: et putet ista
somnia missa sibi.
"De Bissula", line 13; translation from Harold Isbell (trans.) The Last Poets of Imperial Rome (1971) p. 48.

Aristotle photo

“For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1103b.4
Nicomachean Ethics

Forrest Sherman photo

“You can't get good marks if you're popular.”

Forrest Sherman (1896–1951) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

On the need to focus on accomplishment rather than popularity, in a comment to his sister while in high school, quoted in "According to Plan" in TIME magazine (13 March 1950) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,812125,00.html

Related topics