Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.

-Shankly, Bill (William)
Quoted in the SundayTimes, 4 Oct1981.

You jast keep your air on and listen to me.You Awrish people are too well off: thet's wots the matter with you.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Hodson to Matthew Haffigan. John Bull's Other Island, act 3.

I readilyadmit that I am often more serious than I should be at my age or in my present circumstances, yet I know from experiencethat Iamnever lessgiventomelancholy thanwhen I am keenlyapplying the feeble powers of my fallen to be the laughing stock of children.

-Sidney, Sir Philip
  The Defence of Poetry.

They order, said I, this matter better in France.

-Sterne, Laurence
  A SentimentalJourney, opening words.

We are beginning to see now it is matter is the scaffolding of spirit; that the poet emerges from morphemes and phonemes; that as form in sculpture is the prisoner of the hard rock, so in everyday life it is the plain facts and natural happenings that conceal God and reveal him to us little by little under the mind's tooling.

-Thomas, R(onald) S(tuart)
  Frequencies,'Emerging'.

Before us lay a painful road, And guidance have I sought in duteous love From Wisdom's heavenly Father. Hence hath flowed Patience, with trust that, whatsoe'er the way Each takes in this high matter, all may move Cheered with the prospect of a brighter day.

-Wordsworth,William
^40  Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death, no.14,'Apology', l.9^14 (published in the Quarterly Review 1841).