Thursday 19 January 2023

Doggerel

 

The Fifty Most Quoted Lines of Doggerel. 50The mind has its own little place, all to itself: Can make a Heaven of Hols, a Hols like Heaven. (Milton) 49Full fathom five thy fibula lies. (Shakespeare) 48. If your keeper can keep your lead when all about you are losing theirs (Kipling) 47. How do I love thee? Let me count the whistles. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) 46. If music be the food of love, let’s play bone. (Shakespeare) 45. We few, we happy few, we band of borzois. (Shakespeare) 44What is this life if, empty of care,/We have no time to stand and stare. (W.H. Davies) 43The unmoving Shih Tzu shites; and, having shat,/Moves on. (Fitzgerald) 42They also serve who only stand and woof. (Milton) 41The quality of mincemeat is not strained. (Shakespeare) 40In Xanadu dida Kupla Kanines a Stainless Pleasure Bowl devour (Coleridge) 39Frengles, Roamins, Corgidors, lend me your ears. (Shakespeare) 38. Shall I compère thee through this summer’s day. (Shakespeare) 37. Season of missed-yous and shaggy fitfulness. (Keats) 36A thing of beauty is a jog forever. (Keats) 35Do not go gentle into that good bite. (Dylan Thomas) 34Busy old heinzer, unruly stray. (Donne) 33. Stop all the clocks, cut up the chicken bones. Dinner time! (Auden) 32Human kind cannot bear very much reliability. (Eliot) 31O Romeo, Romeo; woofwoof arooooo Romeo! (Shakespeare) 30The labrador doth protest too much, methinks. (Shakespeare) 29The old layabout: Dolce and Decorous yes. (Owen) 28. Arouse is arouse is arouse is arouse. (Gertrude Stein) 27When I am an old woman I shall walk poodles. (Jenny Joseph) 26I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a pekinese. (Joyce Kilmer) 25Hope springs eternally upon the human breast. (Pope) 24When in disgrace without fortune biscuits in men's eyes. (Shakespeare) 23I grow old... I grow old...I shall tear the bottoms of their trousers ROFL. (Eliot) 22'The time has come', the Whippet said,'To baulk at many things'. (Lewis Carroll) 21. A narrow feline in the grass. (Dickinson) 20. Beauty is truth, truth beauty; is that all? (Keats) 19To be or not to be, is that a question? (Shakespeare) 18In Philanderer’s fields the puppies plow. (McCrae) 17. The proper study of mankind is mandatory. (Pope) 16. A little teasing is a dangerous thing. (Pope) 15But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd retrieval stick hurrying near. (Marvell) 14Candy’s for dandies and liquor, city slickers. (Ogden Nash) 13My mistress’ eyes are nothing like her sunnies. (Shakespeare) 12. Things fall apart; the scents have gone cold. (Yeats) 11Because I could not stop for death I blindly stepped forever forward. (Dickinson)10Tis better to have loafed unloosed /Than never to have loafed at all. (Tennyson) 9Look on my works, ye mighty, and declare ‘Good boy!’ (Shelley) 8To strive, to seek, to find, to wag the tail, and not to yield, much. (Tennyson) 7. Dream softly because you dream of my treads (Yeats) 6Not with a bark this time but a kind of extended low-level industrial whining mixed with grump-snorts and a grumbling sort of growly whimper. (Eliot) 5And smiles to go before I sleep. (Frost) 4I wandered cloudily as a loon. (Wordsworth) 3The dog is faith in the man. (Wordsworth) 2The master is the ‘I am’ of my fate. (Henley) 1To errrrr is human; to forage, divine. (Pope)

The source for this list is Mark Forsyth’s blog ‘The Inky Fool’:

 https://blog.inkyfool.com/search?q=most+quoted+lines

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