Peter Porter Quotes

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold
for which I thank the Paddington and Westminster
Public Libraries.

Redeemers always reach the world too late.
God dies, we live; God lives, we die. Our fate.

A professional
is one who believes he has
invented breathing.

We cannot know what John of Leyden felt
Under the Bishop's tongs – we can only
Walk in temperate London, our educated city,
Wishing to cry as freely as they did who died
In the Age of Faith. We have our loneliness
And our regret with which to build an eschatology.

Language of the liberal dead speaks
From the soil of Highgate, tears
Show a great water table is intact.
You cannot leave England, it turns
A planet majestically in the mind.

In Australia
Inter alia,
Mediocrities
Think they’re Socrates.

Somewhere at the heart
of the universe sounds the
true mystic note: Me.

In the New World, happiness is enforced.