“Some on commission, some for the love of learning,
Some because they have nothing better to do
Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden
The drumming of the demon in their ears.”

"The British Museum Reading Room", line 4, from Plant and Phantom (1941)

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 "Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope t…" by Louis MacNeice?
Louis MacNeice photo
Louis MacNeice 10
poet 1907–1963

Related quotes

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Clemens August Graf von Galen photo

“These unfortunate patients must die but rather because, in the opinion of some department, on the testimony of some commission, they have become 'worthless life' because according to this testimony they are 'unproductive national comrades.'”

Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878–1946) German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal, important figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism

The argument goes: they can no longer produce commodities, they are like an old machine that no longer works, they are like an old horse which has become incurably lame, they are like a cow which no longer gives milk.
Speech against Nazi euthanasia (August 3, 1941)

Baltasar Gracián photo

“Some die because they feel everything, others because they feel nothing. Some are fools because they suffer no regrets, and others because they do.”

Unos mueren porque sienten y otros viven porque no sienten. Y assí, unos son necios porque no mueren de sentimiento, y otros lo son porque mueren de él.
Maxim 208 (p. 118)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Deb Caletti photo
Terry Goodkind photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Some men die for lack of love…some die because of it. Think about it." - Daemon”

Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer

Source: Daughter of the Blood

Fernando Pessoa photo

“Give me some more wine, because life is nothing.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa

John Galsworthy photo

Related topics