2nd Earl of Stair

Famous quotes containing the words earl and/or stair:

    The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    The catastrophe
    Buried in the stair carpet stayed there
    And never corrupted anybody.
    And one day he grew up, and the horizon
    Stammered politely. The sky was like muslin.
    And still in the old house no one ever answered the bell.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)