‘Romanticism is spilt religion’ is a famous phrase from the writings of T. E. Hulme (1883-1917), who has been described as the first modernist poet writing in English and whose prose writings – on modern poetry, politics, and modern art among other things – are among the most important early […]
‘To thine own self be true’ is a well-known proverbial expression which means ‘be true to yourself’ or ‘don’t do anything that would go against your true nature’. But what are the origins of this phrase? To discover those, and why they may come tinged with irony in their original […]
‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’ It’s one of the best-known and most widely quoted utterances from the New Testament, and it appears in a relatively short section of the Bible which is replete with famous utterances. But what does Jesus mean by ‘blessed are the […]
‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’ is one of the best-known and most frequently quoted lines from the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), but, like John Donne’s ‘no man is an island’, it doesn’t come from a poem but from a work of prose. But what Shelley […]
‘To sleep, perchance to dream’ is a famous line in probably the most famous section of Hamlet. Shakespeare’s play is chock-full of famous lines – as the old quip has it, it’s a great play but has too many quotations in it – but this particular moment in this long […]