Robert Montgomery Quotes & Sayings

The street is the most impactful for me really, always, and the Internet. I guess I'd like to sell some more light pieces so I can rent some more billboards; that's my only ambition in life really. Then I'd like to save up some money so I can buy a very simple wooden house, and then after that I'd like to start buying billboards. I'd like to buy a bunch of billboards in different cities so we owned them and I could give them to Occupy to tell the truth with. — Robert Montgomery

The soul aspiring pants its source to mount,As streams meander level with their fount. — Robert Montgomery

And there is London!
England's heart and soul. By the proud flowing of her famous Thames, She circulates through countless lands and isles Her greatness; gloriously she rules, At once the awe and sceptre of the world. — Robert Montgomery

A thunder-storm! - the eloquence of heaven, When every cloud is from its slumber riven, Who hath not paused beneath its hollow groan, And felt Omnipotence around him thrown? With what a gloom the ush'ring scene appears! The leaves all shiv'ring with instinctive fears, The waters curling with a fellow dread, A veiling fervour round creation spread, And, last, the heavy rain's reluctant shower, With big drops patt'ring on the tree and bower, While wizard shapes the bowing sky deform, - All mark the coming of the thunder-storm! — Robert Montgomery

Oh! none are so absorb'd, as not to feel Sweet thoughts like music coming o'er the mind: When prayer, the purest incense of a soul, Hath risen to the throne of heaven, the heart Is mellow'd, and the shadows that becloud Our state of darken'd being, glide away; ... — Robert Montgomery

Where beats a heart within a human breast, There be Thou present, and Thy power adored! And oh! since all are doom'd one common race To run, and one eternal goal to reach, May Thy prime attribute each bosom warm With tender sympathy and truth; may man Be link'd to man in fellowship of soul, Till one vast chain of Love embrace the world! — Robert Montgomery

Obviously my own work comes from a conceptual art tradition, but I love the graffiti artists, and I feel spiritually closer to them than to most contemporary art; they make the city a free space of diverse voices and we shouldn't get all cynical about them just because Banksy made some money. I collaborate sometimes with Krae, who is an old school east London graffiti writer. — Robert Montgomery

Are you really listening ... or are you just waiting for your turn to talk? — Robert Montgomery

My advice to you concerning applause is this: enjoy it but never quite believe it — Robert Montgomery

How oft, - be witness, Guardian of our days! ... The sky besprinkled o'er with rainbow hues, As if angelic wings had wanton'd there; ... — Robert Montgomery

Say, care-worn man, Whom Duty chains within the city walls, Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays The fresh wind o'er thy sickly brow, when free To tread the springy turf, - to hear the trees Communing with the gales, - to catch the voice Of waters, gushing from their rocky womb, And singing as they wander ... Spring-hours will come again, and feelings rise With dewy freshness o'er thy wither'd heart. — Robert Montgomery

How sublime Upon a time-blanch'd cliff to muse, and, while The eagle glories in a sea of air, To mingle with the scene around! - Survey The sun-warm heaven ... — Robert Montgomery

Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest. — Robert Montgomery

Oh! weep not that our beauty wears Beneath the wings of Time; That age o'erclouds the brow with cares That once was raised sublime ... But mourn the inward wreck we feel As hoary years depart, And Time's effacing fingers steal Young feelings from the heart! — Robert Montgomery

A universal beauty clothes the world, And one heart seems to beat for all mankind! — Robert Montgomery

So we said to ourselves, if we can remove antibodies from someone who's in the middle of a terrible rejection, and save those kidneys, then we should be able to remove them before surgery — Robert Montgomery

And now, Though haply mellow'd by correcting time, I thank thee, Heaven! that the bereaving world Hath not diminish'd the subliming hopes Of youth, in manhood's more imposing cares ... — Robert Montgomery

I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox. — Robert Montgomery

But when The Spirit speaks, - or beauty from the sky Descends into my being, - when I hear The storm-hymns of the mighty ocean roll, Or thunder sound, - the champion of the storm! - Then I feel envy for immortal words, The rush of living thought; oh! then I long To dash my feelings into deathless verse, That may administer to unborn time, And tell some lofty soul how I have lived A worshipper of Nature and of Thee! — Robert Montgomery

The solitary monk who shook the world
From pagan slumber, when the gospel trump
Thunder' d its challenge from his dauntless lips
In peals of truth. — Robert Montgomery

There's nothing terrible in death;
'Tis but to cast our robes away,
And sleep at night, without a breath
To break repose till dawn of day. — Robert Montgomery

I'm not avoiding your question on my relationship to the fashion world or my work being shown in a fashion setting. My work's most often seen in the streets on billboards. I don't know if it being seen in a shop is any much different. — Robert Montgomery

What if I say that in my view about the least Christian thing you could do is what the Republican party are trying to doing again now, which is try to take charge of the richest country in the world and then deny the people of that country free access to free healthcare and free education and start more wars. — Robert Montgomery

And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace, By breezes lull'd, or by the storm-blasts driv'n, Thy majesty uplifts the mind to heaven. — Robert Montgomery

Earth, air, and ocean, glorious three. — Robert Montgomery

A moment is a mighty thing
Beyond the soul's imagination;
For in it, though we trace it not,
How much there crowds of varied lot
How much of life, life cannot see,
Darts onward to eternity! — Robert Montgomery

Are there not hours of an immortal birth, - Bright visitations from a purer sphere, That cannot live in language? Is there not A mood of glory, when the mind attuned To heaven, can out of dreams create her worlds? - — Robert Montgomery

Beneath our feet a fairy pathway flows, The grass still glitters in the summer breeze, The dusky wood, and distant copse appear, And that lone stream, upon whose chequer'd face We mused, when noon-rays made the pebbles gleam, Is mirror'd to the mind: though all around Be rattling hoofs and roaring wheels, the eye Is wand'ring where the heart delights to dwell. — Robert Montgomery

Free healthcare and free and equal education and peace are about the only things I passionately believe in, and I think if you don't believe in those but you go to church on Sunday then that's hypocris. — Robert Montgomery

The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood lawn cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the now dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theatres and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe. — Robert Montgomery

Oh! now to be alone, on some grand height, Where heaven's black curtains shadow all the sight, And watch the swollen clouds their bosom clash, While fleet and far the living lightnings flash ... And see the fiery arrows fall and rise, In dizzy chase along the rattling skies, - How stirs the spirit while the echoes roll, And God, in thunder, rocks from pole to pole! — Robert Montgomery

As o'er the stormy sea of human Life We sail, until our anchor'd spirits rest In the far haven of Eternity, ... — Robert Montgomery

Berlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there's lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can't afford the rent in London and New York, and they're having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now. — Robert Montgomery

And Thou, vast Ocean! on whole awful face Time's iron feet can print no ruin trace. — Robert Montgomery