"Lord might I be a
king of men
Id sooner be a boy agen"
Id sooner be a boy agen"
Pet MS A59 p49
Over his long life Clare was in the habit of expressing his thoughts in succinct and memorable statements and idiomatic phrases. Thanks to the late David Powell, the librarian at the Clare collection in Northampton, many of these were collected and published, first "Clare's Proverbs" and then "Clare's Aphorisms". However, both books are now virtually impossible to obtain. So to fill this gap, this page seeks to bring Clare's aphorisms to a wider audience.