Famous quotes containing the words islands, british, virgin and/or saint:
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Child in the womb,
Or saint on a tomb
Which way shall I lie
To fall asleep?”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)