This is a completely new dictionary, containing about 5,000 quotations.
What is a "quotation"? It is a saying or piece of writing that strikes
people as so true or memorable that they quote it (or allude to it) in
speech or writing. Often they will quote it directly, introducing it with
a phrase like "As ---- says" but equally often they will assume that the
reader or listener already knows the quotation, and they will simply
allude to it without mentioning its source (as in the headline "A ros‚ is
a ros‚ is a ros‚," referring obliquely to a line by Gertrude Stein).
This dictionary has been compiled from extensive evidence of the
quotations that are actually used in this way. The dictionary includes
the commonest quotations which were found in a collection of more than
200,000 citations assembled by combing books, magazines, and newspapers.
For example, our collections contained more than thirty examples each for
Edward Heath's "unacceptable face of capitalism" and Marshal McLuhan's
"The medium is the message," so both these quotations had to be included.
As a result, this book is not--like many quotations dictionaries--a
subjective anthology of the editor's favourite quotations, but an
objective selection of the quotations which are most widely known and
used. Popularity and familiarity are the main criteria for inclusion,
although no reader is likely to be familiar with all the quotations in
this dictionary.
The book can be used for reference or for browsing: to trace the source of
a particular quotation or to find an appropriate saying for a special
need.
The quotations are drawn from novels, plays, poems, essays, speeches,
films radio and television broadcasts, songs, advertisements, and even
book titles. It is difficult to draw the line between quotations and
similar sayings like proverbs, catch-phrases, and idioms. For example,
some quotations (like "The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings")
become proverbial. These are usually included if they can be traced to a
particular originator. However, we have generally omitted phrases like
"agonizing reappraisal" which are covered adequately in the Oxford English
Dictionary. Catch-phrases are included if there is evidence that they are
widely remembered or used.
We have taken care to verify all the quotations in original or
authoritative sources--something which few other quotations dictionaries
have tried to do. We have corrected many errors found in other
dictionaries, and we have traced the true origins of such phrases as
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and "Shaken and not stirred."
The quotations are arranged in alphabetical order of authors, with
anonymous quotations in the middle of "A." Under each author, the
quotations are arranged in alphabetical order of their first words.
Foreign quotations are, wherever possible, given in the original language
as well as in translation.
Authors are cited under the names by which they are best known: for
example, Graham Greene (not Henry Graham Greene); F. Scott Fitzgerald (not
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald); George Orwell (not Eric Blair); W. C.
Fields (not William Claude Dukenfield). Authors' dates of birth and death
are given when ascertainable. The actual writers of the words are
credited for quotations from songs, film-scripts, etc.
The references after each quotation are designed to be as helpful as
possible, enabling the reader to trace quotations in their original
sources if desired.
The index (1) has been carefully prepared--with ingenious computer
assistance--to help the reader to trace quotations from their most
important keywords. Each reference includes not only the page and the
number of the quotation on the page but also the first few letters of the
author's name. The index includes references to book-titles which have
become well known as quotations in their own right.
One difficulty in a dictionary of modern quotations is to decide what the
word "modern" means. In this dictionary it means "twentieth-century."
Quotations are eligible if they originated from someone who was still
alive after 1900. Where an author (like George Bernard Shaw, who died in
1950) said memorable things before and after 1900, these are all included.
This dictionary could not have been compiled without the work of many
people, most notably Paula Clifford, Angela Partington, Fiona Mullan,
Penelope Newsome, Julia Cresswell, Michael McKinley, Charles McCreery,
Heidi Abbey, Jean Harder, Elizabeth Knowles, George Chowdharay-Best,
Tracey Ward, and Ernest Trehern. I am also very grateful to the OUP
Dictionary Department's team of checkers, who verified the quotations at
libraries in Oxford, London, Washington, New York, and elsewhere. James
Howes deserves credit for his work in computerizing the index.
The Editor is responsible for any errors, which he will be grateful to
have drawn to his attention. As the quotation from Simeon Strunsky reminds
us, "Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly," but we have
endeavoured to make this book more accurate, authoritative, and helpful
than any other dictionary of modern quotations.
TONY AUGARDE
(1) Discussions of the index features in this preface and in the
"How to Use this Dictionary" section of this book refer to
the hard-copy edition printed in 1991. No index has been
included in this soft-copy edition. See "Notices" in
topic NOTICES for additional information about this soft-copy
edition.
HOWTO How to Use this Dictionary
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HOWTO.1 General Principles
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The arrangement is alphabetical by the names of authors: usually the
names by which each person is best known. So look under Maya Angelou, not
Maya Johnson; Princess Anne, not HRH The Princess Royal; Lord Beaverbrook,
not William Maxwell Aitken; Irving Berlin, not Israel Balin; Greta Garbo,
not Greta Lovisa Gustafsson,
Anonymous quotations are all together, starting in "Anonymous" in
topic 1.43 They are arranged in alphabetical order of their first
significant word.
Under each author, quotations are arranged by the alphabetical order of
the titles of the works from which they come, even if those works were not
written by the person who is being quoted. Poems are usually cited from
the first book in which they appeared.
Quotations by foreign authors are, where possible, given in the original
language and also in an English translation.
A reference is given after each quotation to its original source or to an
authoritative record of its use. The reference usually consists of either
(a) a book-title with its date of publication and a reference to where the
quotation occurs in the book; or (b) the title of a newspaper or magazine
with its date of publication. The reference is preceded by "In" if the
quotation comes from a secondary source: for example if a writer is quoted
by another author in a newspaper article, or if a book refers to a saying
but does not indicate where or when it was made.
Here are some typical entries, with notes to clarify the meaning of each
part.
Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin)
1889-1977
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and
a pretty girl.
My Autobiography (1964) ch. 10
Charlie Chaplin is the name by which this person is best known but Sir
Charles Spencer Chaplin is the name which would appear in reference books
such as Who's Who.
Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889 and died in 1977. The quotation comes
from the tenth chapter of Chaplin's autobiography, which was published in
1964.
Martin Luther King
1929-1968
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, Alabama, 16 Apr. 1963, in
Atlantic Monthly Aug. 1963, p. 78
Martin Luther King wrote these words in a letter that he sent from
Birmingham Jail on 16 April 1963. The letter was published later that year
on page 78 of the August issue of the Atlanta Monthly.
Dorothy Parker
1893-1967
One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
In Howard Teichmann George S. Kaufman (1972) p. 68
Dorothy Parker must have said this before she died in 1967 but the
earliest reliable source we can find is a 1972 book by Howard Teichmann.
"In" signals the fact that the quotation is cited from a secondary source.
HOWTO.3 Index
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If you remember part of a quotation and want to know the rest of it, or
who said it, you can trace it by means of the index (1).
The index lists the most significant words from each quotation. These
keywords are listed alphabetically in the index, each with a section of
the text to show the context of every keyword. These sections are listed
in strict alphabetical order under each keyword. Foreign keywords are
included in their alphabetical place.
The references show the first few letters of the author's name, followed
by the page and item numbers (e.g. 163:15 refers to the fifteenth
quotation on page 163).
As an example, suppose that you want to verify a quotation which you
remember contains the line "to purify the dialect of the tribe." If you
decide that tribe is a significant word and refer to it in the index, you
will find this entry:
tribe: To purify the dialect of the t. ELIOT 74:19
This will lead you to the poem by T. S. Eliot which is the nineteenth
quotation on page 74.
CONTENTS Table of Contents
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Title Page TITLE
Edition Notice EDITION
Notices NOTICES
Preface PREFACE
How to Use this Dictionary HOWTO
General Principles HOWTO.1
Examples HOWTO.2
Index HOWTO.3
Table of Contents CONTENTS
A 1.0
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (Louis Francis Cristillo) 1.1
Dannie Abse 1.2
Goodman Ace 1.3
Dean Acheson 1.4
J. R. Ackerley 1.5
Douglas Adams 1.6
Frank Adams and Will M. Hough 1.7
Franklin P. Adams 1.8
Henry Brooks Adams 1.9
Harold Adamson 1.10
George Ade 1.11
Konrad Adenauer 1.12
Alfred Adler 1.13
Polly Adler 1.14
AE (A.E., ’) (George William Russell) 1.15
Herbert Agar 1.16
James Agate 1.17
Spiro T. Agnew 1.18
Max Aitken 1.19
Zo‰ Akins 1.20
Alain (ђmile-Auguste Chartier) 1.21
Edward Albee 1.22
Richard Aldington 1.23
Brian Aldiss 1.24
Nelson Algren 1.25
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) 1.26
Fred Allen (John Florence Sullivan) 1.27
Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg) 1.28
Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg) and Marshall Brickman 1.29
Margery Allingham 1.30
Joseph Alsop 1.31
Robert Altman 1.32
Leo Amery 1.33
Kingsley Amis 1.34
Maxwell Anderson 1.35
Maxwell Anderson and Lawrence Stallings 1.36
Robert Anderson 1.37
James Anderton 1.38
Sir Norman Angell 1.39
Maya Angelou (Maya Johnson) 1.40
Paul Anka 1.41
Princess Anne (HRH the Princess Royal) 1.42
Anonymous 1.43
Jean Anouilh 1.44
Guillaume Apollinaire 1.45
Sir Edward Appleton 1.46
Louis Aragon 1.47
Hannah Arendt 1.48
G. D. Armour 1.49
Harry Armstrong 1.50
Louis Armstrong 1.51
Neil Armstrong 1.52
Sir Robert Armstrong 1.53
Raymond Aron 1.54
George Asaf 1.55
Dame Peggy Ashcroft 1.56
Daisy Ashford 1.57
Isaac Asimov 1.58
Elizabeth Asquith (Princess Antoine Bibesco) 1.59
Herbert Henry Asquith (Earl of Oxford and Asquith) 1.60
Margot Asquith (Countess of Oxford and Asquith) 1.61
Raymond Asquith 1.62
Nancy Astor (Viscountess Astor) 1.63
Brooks Atkinson 1.64
E. L. Atkinson and Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1.65
Clement Attlee 1.66
W. H. Auden 1.67
W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood 1.68
Tex Avery (Fred Avery) 1.69
Earl of Avon 1.70
Revd W. Awdry 1.71
Alan Ayckbourn 1.72
A. J. Ayer 1.73
Pam Ayres 1.74
B 2.0
Robert Baden-Powell (Baron Baden-Powell) 2.1
Joan Baez 2.2
Sydney D. Bailey 2.3
Bruce Bairnsfather 2.4
Hylda Baker 2.5
James Baldwin 2.6
Stanley Baldwin (Earl Baldwin of Bewdley) 2.7
Arthur James Balfour (Earl of Balfour) 2.8
Whitney Balliett 2.9
Pierre Balmain 2.10
Tallulah Bankhead 2.11
Nancy Banks-Smith 2.12
Imamu Amiri Baraka (Everett LeRoi Jones) 2.13
W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings) 2.14
Maurice Baring 2.15
Ronnie Barker 2.16
Frederick R. Barnard 2.17
Clive Barnes 2.18
Julian Barnes 2.19
Peter Barnes 2.20
Sir J. M. Barrie 2.21
Ethel Barrymore 2.22
John Barrymore 2.23
Lionel Bart 2.24
Karl Barth 2.25
Roland Barthes 2.26
Bernard Baruch 2.27
Jacques Barzun 2.28
L. Frank Baum 2.29
Vicki Baum 2.30
Sir Arnold Bax 2.31
Sir Beverley Baxter 2.32
Beachcomber 2.33
David, First Earl Beatty 2.34
Lord Beaverbrook (William Maxwell Aitken, first Baron Beaverbrook) 2.35
Carl Becker 2.36
Samuel Beckett 2.37
Harry Bedford and Terry Sullivan 2.38
Sir Thomas Beecham 2.39
Sir Max Beerbohm 2.40
Brendan Behan 2.41
John Hay Beith 2.42
Clive Bell 2.43
Henry Bellamann 2.44
Hilaire Belloc 2.45
Saul Bellow 2.46
Robert Benchley 2.47
Julien Benda 2.48
Stephen Vincent Ben‚t 2.49
William Rose Ben‚t 2.50
Tony Benn 2.51
George Bennard 2.52
Alan Bennett 2.53
Arnold Bennett 2.54
Ada Benson and Fred Fisher 2.55
A. C. Benson 2.56
Stella Benson 2.57
Edmund Clerihew Bentley 2.58
Eric Bentley 2.59
Nikolai Berdyaev 2.60
Lord Charles Beresford 2.61
Henri Bergson 2.62
Irving Berlin (Israel Baline) 2.63
Sir Isaiah Berlin 2.64
Georges Bernanos 2.65
Jeffrey Bernard 2.66
Eric Berne 2.67
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward 2.68
Chuck Berry 2.69
John Berryman 2.70
Pierre Berton 2.71
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg 2.72
Sir John Betjeman 2.73
Aneurin Bevan 2.74
William Henry Beveridge (First Baron Beveridge) 2.75
Ernest Bevin 2.76
Georges Bidault 2.77
Ambrose Bierce 2.78
Laurence Binyon 2.79
Nigel Birch (Baron Rhyl) 2.80
John Bird 2.81
Earl of Birkenhead 2.82
Lord Birkett (William Norman Birkett, Baron Birkett) 2.83
Eric Blair 2.84
Eubie Blake (James Hubert Blake) 2.85
Lesley Blanch 2.86
Alan Bleasdale 2.87
Karen Blixen 2.88
Edmund Blunden 2.89
Alfred Blunt (Bishop of Bradford) 2.90
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt 2.91
Ronald Blythe 2.92
Enid Blyton 2.93
Louise Bogan 2.94
Humphrey Bogart 2.95
John B. Bogart 2.96
Niels Bohr 2.97
Alan Bold 2.98
Robert Bolt 2.99
Andrew Bonar Law 2.100
Carrie Jacobs Bond 2.101
Sir David Bone 2.102
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 2.103
Sonny Bono (Salvatore Bono) 2.104
Daniel J. Boorstin 2.105
James H. Boren 2.106
Jorge Luis Borges 2.107
Max Born 2.108
John Collins Bossidy 2.109
Gordon Bottomley 2.110
Horatio Bottomley 2.111
Sir Harold Edwin Boulton 2.112
Elizabeth Bowen 2.113
David Bowie (David Jones) 2.114
Sir Maurice Bowra 2.115
Charles Boyer 2.116
Lord Brabazon (Baron Brabazon of Tara) 2.117
Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman Jr. 2.118
Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch 2.119
F. H. Bradley 2.120
Omar Bradley 2.121
Caryl Brahms (Doris Caroline Abrahams) and S. J. Simon (Simon Jasha Skidelsky) 2.122
John Braine 2.123
Ernest Bramah (Ernest Bramah Smith) 2.124
Georges Braque 2.125
John Bratby 2.126
Irving Brecher 2.127
Bertolt Brecht 2.128
Gerald Brenan 2.129
Aristide Briand 2.130
Vera Brittain 2.131
David Broder 2.132
Jacob Bronowski 2.133
Rupert Brooke 2.134
Anita Brookner 2.135
Mel Brooks 2.136
Heywood Broun 2.137
H. Rap Brown 2.138
Helen Gurley Brown 2.139
Ivor Brown 2.140
John Mason Brown 2.141
Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein) 2.142
Nacio Herb Brown 2.143
Cecil Browne 2.144
Sir Frederick Browning 2.145
Lenny Bruce (Leonard Alfred Schneider) 2.146
Anita Bryant 2.147
Martin Buber 2.148
John Buchan (Baron Tweedsmuir) 2.149
Frank Buchman 2.150
Gene Buck (Edward Eugene Buck) and Herman Ruby 2.151
Richard Buckle 2.152
Arthur Buller 2.153
Ivor Bulmer-Thomas 2.154
Luis Bu¤uel 2.155
Anthony Burgess 2.156
Johnny Burke 2.157
John Burns 2.158
William S. Burroughs 2.159
Benjamin Hapgood Burt 2.160
Nat Burton 2.161
R. A. Butler (Baron Butler of Saffron Walden) 2.162
Ralph Butler and Noel Gay (Richard Moxon Armitage) 2.163
Samuel Butler 2.164
Max Bygraves 2.165
James Branch Cabell 2.166
C 3.0
Irving Caesar 3.1
John Cage 3.2
James Cagney 3.3
Sammy Cahn (Samuel Cohen) 3.4
James M. Cain 3.5
Michael Caine (Maurice Joseph Micklewhite) 3.6
Sir Joseph Cairns 3.7
Charles Calhoun 3.8
James Callaghan (Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff) 3.9
Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) 3.10
Mrs Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Campbell) 3.11
Roy Campbell 3.12
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 3.13
Albert Camus 3.14
Elias Canetti 3.15
Hughie Cannon 3.16
John R. Caples 3.17
Al Capone 3.18
Truman Capote 3.19
Al Capp 3.20
Ethna Carbery (Anna MacManus) 3.21
Hoagy Carmichael (Hoagland Howard Carmichael) 3.22
Stokely Carmichael and Charles Vernon Hamilton 3.23
Dale Carnegie 3.24
J. L. Carr 3.25
Edward Carson (Baron Carson) 3.26
Jimmy Carter 3.27
Sydney Carter 3.28
Pablo Casals 3.29
Ted Castle (Baron Castle of Islington) 3.30
Harry Castling and C. W. Murphy 3.31
Fidel Castro 3.32
Willa Cather 3.33
Mr Justice Caulfield (Sir Bernard Caulfield) 3.34
Charles Causley 3.35
Constantine Cavafy 3.36
Edith Cavell 3.37
Lord David Cecil 3.38
Patrick Reginald Chalmers 3.39
Joseph Chamberlain 3.40
Neville Chamberlain 3.41
Harry Champion 3.42
Raymond Chandler 3.43
Coco Chanel 3.44
Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin) 3.45
Arthur Chapman 3.46
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin 3.47
Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales) 3.48
Apsley Cherry-Garrard 3.49
G. K. Chesterton 3.50
Maurice Chevalier 3.51
Erskine Childers 3.52
Charles Chilton 3.53
Noam Chomsky 3.54
Dame Agatha Christie 3.55
Frank E. Churchill 3.56
Sir Winston Churchill 3.57
Count Galeazzo Ciano 3.58
Brian Clark 3.59
Kenneth Clark (Baron Clark) 3.60
Arthur C. Clarke 3.61
Grant Clarke and Edgar Leslie 3.62
Eldridge Cleaver 3.63
John Cleese 3.64
John Cleese and Connie Booth 3.65
Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn 3.66
Georges Clemenceau 3.67
Harlan Cleveland 3.68
Richard Cobb 3.69
Claud Cockburn 3.70
Jean Cocteau 3.71
Lenore Coffee 3.72
George M. Cohan 3.73
Desmond Coke 3.74
Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) 3.75
R. G. Collingwood 3.76
Charles Collins and Fred W. Leigh 3.77
Charles Collins and Fred Murray 3.78
Charles Collins, E. A. Sheppard, and Fred Terry 3.79
John Churton Collins 3.80
Michael Collins 3.81
Betty Comden and Adolph Green 3.82
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett 3.83
Billy Connolly 3.84
Cyril Connolly 3.85
James Connolly 3.86
Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski) 3.87
Shirley Conran 3.88
A. J. Cook 3.89
Dan Cook 3.90
Peter Cook 3.91
Calvin Coolidge 3.92
Ananda Coomaraswamy 3.93
Alfred Duff Cooper (Viscount Norwich) 3.94
Tommy Cooper 3.95
Wendy Cope 3.96
Aaron Copland 3.97
Bernard Cornfeld 3.98
Frances Cornford 3.99
Francis Macdonald Cornford 3.100
Baron Pierre de Coubertin 3.101
ђmile Cou‚ 3.102
No‰l Coward 3.103
Hart Crane 3.104
James Creelman and Ruth Rose 3.105
Bishop Mandell Creighton 3.106
Quentin Crisp 3.107
Julian Critchley 3.108
Richmal Crompton (Richmal Crompton Lamburn) 3.109
Bing Crosby (Harry Lillis Crosby) 3.110
Bing Crosby, Roy Turk, and Fred Ahlert 3.111
Richard Crossman 3.112
Aleister Crowley 3.113
Leslie Crowther 3.114
Robert Crumb 3.115
Bruce Frederick Cummings 3.116
e. e. cummings 3.117
William Thomas Cummings 3.118
Will Cuppy 3.119
Edwina Currie 3.120
Michael Curtiz 3.121
Lord Curzon (George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston) 3.122
D 4.0
Paul Daniels 4.1
Charles Brace Darrow 4.2
Clarence Darrow 4.3
Sir Francis Darwin 4.4
Jules Dassin 4.5
Worton David and Lawrence Wright 4.6
Jack Davies and Ken Annakin 4.7
W. H. Davies 4.8
Bette Davis (Ruth Elizabeth Davis) 4.9
Lord Dawson of Penn (Bertrand Edward Dawson, Viscount Dawson of Penn) 4.10
C. Day-Lewis 4.11
Simone de Beauvoir 4.12
Edward de Bono 4.13
Eugene Victor Debs 4.14
Edgar Degas 4.15
Charles de Gaulle 4.16
J. de Knight (James E. Myers) and M. Freedman 4.17
Walter de la Mare 4.18
Shelagh Delaney 4.19
Jack Dempsey 4.20
Nigel Dennis 4.21
Buddy De Sylva (George Gard De Sylva) and Lew Brown 4.22
Peter De Vries 4.23
Lord Dewar 4.24
Sergei Diaghilev 4.25
Paul Dickson 4.26
Joan Didion 4.27
Howard Dietz 4.28
William Dillon 4.29
Ernest Dimnet 4.30
Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) 4.31
Mort Dixon 4.32
Milovan Djilas 4.33
Austin Dobson (Henry Austin Dobson) 4.34
Ken Dodd 4.35
J. P. Donleavy 4.36
Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith 4.37
Keith Douglas 4.38
Norman Douglas 4.39
Sir Alec Douglas-Home 4.40
Caroline Douglas-Home 4.41
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 4.42
Maurice Drake 4.43
William A. Drake 4.44
John Drinkwater 4.45
Alexander Dubcek 4.46
Al Dubin 4.47
W. E. B. DuBois 4.48
Georges Duhamel 4.49
Raoul Duke 4.50
John Foster Dulles 4.51
Dame Daphne du Maurier 4.52
Isadora Duncan 4.53
Ian Dunlop 4.54
Jimmy Durante 4.55
Leo Durocher 4.56
Ian Dury 4.57
Lillian K. Dykstra 4.58
Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) 4.59
E 5.0
Stephen T. Early 5.1
Clint Eastwood 5.2
Abba Eban 5.3
Sir Anthony Eden (Earl of Avon) 5.4
Clarissa Eden (Countess of Avon) 5.5
Marriott Edgar 5.6
Duke of Edinburgh 5.7
Thomas Alva Edison 5.8
John Maxwell Edmonds 5.9
King Edward VII 5.10
King Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor) 5.11
John Ehrlichman 5.12
Albert Einstein 5.13
Dwight D. Eisenhower 5.14
T. S. Eliot 5.15
Queen Elizabeth II 5.16
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother 5.17
Alf Ellerton 5.18
Havelock Ellis (Henry Havelock Ellis) 5.19
Paul Eluard 5.20
Sir William Empson 5.21
Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch 5.22
Susan Ertz 5.23
Dudley Erwin 5.24
Howard Estabrook and Harry Behn 5.25
Gavin Ewart 5.26
William Norman Ewer 5.27
F 6.0
Clifton Fadiman 6.1
Eleanor Farjeon 6.2
King Farouk of Egypt 6.3
William Faulkner 6.4
George Fearon 6.5
James Fenton 6.6
Edna Ferber 6.7
Kathleen Ferrier 6.8
Eric Field 6.9
Dorothy Fields 6.10
Dame Gracie Fields (Grace Stansfield) 6.11
W. C. Fields (William Claude Dukenfield) 6.12
Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, and Dean Riesner 6.13
Ronald Firbank 6.14
Fred Fisher 6.15
H. A. L. Fisher 6.16
John Arbuthnot Fisher (Baron Fisher) 6.17
Marve Fisher 6.18
Albert H. Fitz 6.19
F. Scott Fitzgerald 6.20
Zelda Fitzgerald 6.21
Robert Fitzsimmons 6.22
Bud Flanagan (Chaim Reeven Weintrop) 6.23
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann 6.24
James Elroy Flecker 6.25
Ian Fleming 6.26
Robert, Marquis de Flers and Arman de Caillavet 6.27
Dario Fo 6.28
Marshal Ferdinand Foch 6.29
J. Foley 6.30
Michael Foot 6.31
Anna Ford 6.32
Gerald Ford 6.33
Henry Ford 6.34
Lena Guilbert Ford 6.35
Howell Forgy 6.36
E. M. Forster 6.37
Bruce Forsyth 6.38
Harry Emerson Fosdick 6.39
Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole-Fran‡ois Thibault) 6.40
Georges Franju 6.41
Sir James George Frazer 6.42
Stan Freberg 6.43
Arthur Freed 6.44
Ralph Freed 6.45
Cliff Freeman 6.46
John Freeman 6.47
Marilyn French 6.48
Sigmund Freud 6.49
Max Frisch 6.50
Charles Frohman 6.51
Erich Fromm 6.52
David Frost 6.53
Robert Frost 6.54
Christopher Fry 6.55
Roger Fry 6.56
R. Buckminster Fuller 6.57
Alfred Funke 6.58
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe 6.59
Will Fyffe 6.60
Rose Fyleman 6.61
G 7.0
Zsa Zsa Gabor (Sari Gabor) 7.1
Norman Gaff 7.2
Hugh Gaitskell 7.3
J. K. Galbraith 7.4
John Galsworthy 7.5
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson 7.6
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 7.7
Greta Garbo (Greta Lovisa Gustafsson) 7.8
Ed Gardner 7.9
John Nance Garner 7.10
Bamber Gascoigne 7.11
Noel Gay (Richard Moxon Armitage) 7.12
Noel Gay and Ralph Butler 7.13
Sir Eric Geddes 7.14
Bob Geldof 7.15
Bob Geldof and Midge Ure 7.16
King George V 7.17
Daniel George (Daniel George Bunting) 7.18
George Gershwin 7.19
Ira Gershwin 7.20
Stella Gibbons 7.21
Wolcott Gibbs 7.22
Kahlil Gibran 7.23
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 7.24
Andr‚ Gide 7.25
Eric Gill 7.26
Terry Gilliam 7.27
Penelope Gilliatt 7.28
Allen Ginsberg 7.29
George Gipp 7.30
Jean Giraudoux 7.31
George Glass 7.32
John A. Glover-Kind 7.33
Jean-Luc Godard 7.34
A. D. Godley 7.35
Joseph Goebbels 7.36
Hermann Goering 7.37
Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (Benjamin Eisenberg) 7.38
Isaac Goldberg 7.39
William Golding 7.40
Emma Goldman 7.41
Barry Goldwater 7.42
Sam Goldwyn (Samuel Goldfish) 7.43
Paul Goodman 7.44
Mack Gordon 7.45
Stuart Gorrell 7.46
Sir Edmund Gosse 7.47
Lord Gowrie (2nd Earl of Gowrie) 7.48
Lew Grade (Baron Grade) 7.49
D. M. Graham 7.50
Harry Graham 7.51
Kenneth Grahame 7.52
Bernie Grant 7.53
Ethel Watts-Mumford Grant 7.54
Robert Graves 7.55
Hannah Green (Joanne Greenberg) 7.56
Graham Greene 7.57
Oswald Greene 7.58
Germaine Greer 7.59
Hubert Gregg 7.60
Joyce Grenfell 7.61
Julian Grenfell 7.62
Clifford Grey 7.63
Sir Edward Grey (Viscount Grey of Fallodon) 7.64
Mervyn Griffith-Jones 7.65
Leon Griffiths 7.66
Jo Grimond (Baron Grimond) 7.67
Philip Guedalla 7.68
R. Guidry 7.69
Texas Guinan (Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan) 7.70
Nubar Gulbenkian 7.71
Thom Gunn 7.72
Dorothy Frances Gurney 7.73
Woody Guthrie (Woodrow Wilson Guthrie) 7.74
H 8.0
Earl Haig 8.1
Lord Hailsham (Baron Hailsham, Quintin Hogg) 8.2
J. B. S. Haldane 8.3
H. R. Haldeman 8.4
Sir William Haley 8.5
Henry Hall 8.6
Sir Peter Hall 8.7
Margaret Halsey 8.8
Oscar Hammerstein II 8.9
Christopher Hampton 8.10
Learned Hand 8.11
Minnie Hanff 8.12
Brian Hanrahan 8.13
Otto Harbach 8.14
E. Y. 'Yip' Harburg 8.15
Gilbert Harding 8.16
Warren G. Harding 8.17
Godfrey Harold Hardy 8.18
Thomas Hardy 8.19
Maurice Evan Hare 8.20
Robertson Hare 8.21
W. F. Hargreaves 8.22
Lord Harlech (David Ormsby Gore) 8.23
Jimmy Harper, Will E. Haines, and Tommie Connor 8.24
Frank Harris (James Thomas Harris) 8.25
H. H. Harris 8.26
Lorenz Hart 8.27
Moss Hart and George Kaufman 8.28
L. P. Hartley 8.29
F. W. Harvey 8.30
Minnie Louise Haskins 8.31
Lord Haw-Haw 8.32
Ian Hay (John Hay Beith) 8.33
J. Milton Hayes 8.34
Lee Hazlewood 8.35
Denis Healey 8.36
Seamus Heaney 8.37
Edward Heath 8.38
Fred Heatherton 8.39
Robert A. Heinlein 8.40
Werner Heisenberg 8.41
Joseph Heller 8.42
Lillian Hellman 8.43
Sir Robert Helpmann 8.44
Ernest Hemingway 8.45
Arthur W. D. Henley 8.46
O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) 8.47
A. P. Herbert 8.48
Oliver Herford 8.49
Jerry Herman 8.50
June Hershey 8.51
Hermann Hesse 8.52
Gordon Hewart (Viscount Hewart) 8.53
Patricia Hewitt 8.54
Du Bose Heyward and Ira Gershwin 8.55
Sir Seymour Hicks 8.56
Jack Higgins (Henry Patterson) 8.57
Joe Hill 8.58
Pattie S. Hill 8.59
Sir Edmund Hillary 8.60
Fred Hillebrand 8.61
Lady Hillingdon 8.62
James Hilton 8.63
Alfred Hitchcock 8.64
Adolf Hitler 8.65
Ralph Hodgson 8.66
'Red' Hodgson 8.67
Eric Hoffer 8.68
Al Hoffman and Dick Manning 8.69
Gerard Hoffnung 8.70
Lancelot Hogben 8.71
Billie Holiday (Eleanor Fagan) and Arthur Herzog Jr. 8.72
Stanley Holloway 8.73
John H. Holmes 8.74
Lord Home (Baron Home of the Hirsel, formerly Sir Alec Douglas-Home) 8.75
Arthur Honegger 8.76
Herbert Hoover 8.77
Anthony Hope (Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins) 8.78
Bob Hope 8.79
Francis Hope 8.80
Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Nicolson) 8.81
Zilphia Horton 8.82
A. E. Housman 8.83
Sidney Howard 8.84
Elbert Hubbard 8.85
Frank McKinney ('Kin') Hubbard 8.86
L. Ron Hubbard 8.87
Howard Hughes Jr. 8.88
Jimmy Hughes and Frank Lake 8.89
Langston Hughes 8.90
Ted Hughes 8.91
Josephine Hull 8.92
Hubert Humphrey 8.93
Herman Hupfeld 8.94
Aldous Huxley 8.95
Sir Julian Huxley 8.96
I 9.0
Dolores Ibarruri ('La Pasionaria') 9.1
Henrik Ibsen 9.2
Harold L. Ickes 9.3
Eric Idle 9.4
Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox) 9.5
Ivan Illich 9.6
Charles Inge 9.7
William Ralph Inge (Dean Inge) 9.8
EugЉne Ionesco 9.9
Weldon J. Irvine 9.10
Christopher Isherwood 9.11
J 10.0
Holbrook Jackson 10.1
Joe Jacobs 10.2
Mick Jagger and Keith Richard (Keith Richards) 10.3
Henry James 10.4
William James 10.5
Randall Jarrell 10.6
Douglas Jay 10.7
Sir James Jeans 10.8
Patrick Jenkin 10.9
Rt. Revd David Jenkins (Bishop of Durham) 10.10
Roy Jenkins (Baron Jenkins of Hillhead) 10.11
Paul Jennings 10.12
Jerome K. Jerome 10.13
William Jerome 10.14
C. E. M. Joad 10.15
Pope John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli) 10.16
Lyndon Baines Johnson 10.17
Philander Chase Johnson 10.18
Philip Johnson 10.19
Hanns Johst 10.20
Al Jolson 10.21
James Jones 10.22
LeRoi Jones 10.23
Erica Jong 10.24
Janis Joplin 10.25
Sir Keith Joseph 10.26
James Joyce 10.27
William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) 10.28
Jack Judge and Harry Williams 10.29
Carl Gustav Jung 10.30
K 11.0
Pauline Kael 11.1
Franz Kafka 11.2
Gus Kahn and Raymond B. Egan 11.3
Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, and Nat Perrin 11.4
George S. Kaufman 11.5
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 11.6
George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind 11.7
Gerald Kaufman 11.8
Paul Kaufman and Mike Anthony 11.9
Patrick Kavanagh 11.10
Ted Kavanagh 11.11
Helen Keller 11.12
Jaan Kenbrovin and John William Kellette 11.13
Florynce Kennedy 11.14
Jimmy Kennedy 11.15
Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr 11.16
Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams (Will Grosz) 11.17
John F. Kennedy 11.18
Joseph P. Kennedy 11.19
Robert F. Kennedy 11.20
Jack Kerouac 11.21
Jean Kerr 11.22
Joseph Kesselring 11.23
John Maynard Keynes (Baron Keynes) 11.24
Nikita Khrushchev 11.25
Joyce Kilmer 11.26
Lord Kilmuir (Sir David Maxwell Fyfe) 11.27
Martin Luther King 11.28
Stoddard King 11.29
David Kingsley, Dennis Lyons, and Peter Lovell-Davis 11.30
Hugh Kingsmill (Hugh Kingsmill Lunn) 11.31
Neil Kinnock 11.32
Rudyard Kipling 11.33
Henry Kissinger 11.34
Fred Kitchen 11.35
Lord Kitchener 11.36
Paul Klee 11.37
Charles Knight and Kenneth Lyle 11.38
Frederick Knott 11.39
Monsignor Ronald Knox 11.40
Arthur Koestler 11.41
Jiddu Krishnamurti 11.42
Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster 11.43
Joseph Wood Krutch 11.44
Stanley Kubrick 11.45
Satish Kumar 11.46
L 12.0
Henry Labouchere 12.1
Fiorello La Guardia 12.2
R. D. Laing 12.3
Arthur J. Lamb 12.4
Constant Lambert 12.5
Giuseppe di Lampedusa 12.6
Sir Osbert Lancaster 12.7
Bert Lance 12.8
Andrew Lang 12.9
Julia Lang 12.10
Suzanne K. Langer 12.11
Ring Lardner 12.12
Philip Larkin 12.13
Sir Harry Lauder 12.14
Stan Laurel (Arthur Stanley Jefferson) 12.15
James Laver 12.16
Andrew Bonar Law 12.17
D. H. Lawrence 12.18
T. E. Lawrence 12.19
Sir Edmund Leach 12.20
Stephen Leacock 12.21
Timothy Leary 12.22
F. R. Leavis 12.23
Fran Lebowitz 12.24
Stanislaw Lec 12.25
John le Carr‚ (David John Moore Cornwell) 12.26
Le Corbusier (Charles ђdouard Jeanneret) 12.27
Harper Lee 12.28
Laurie Lee 12.29
Ernest Lehman 12.30
Tom Lehrer 12.31
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller 12.32
Fred W. Leigh 12.33
Fred W. Leigh, Charles Collins, and Lily Morris 12.34
Fred W. Leigh and George Arthurs 12.35
Curtis E. LeMay 12.36
Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov) 12.37
John Lennon 12.38
John Lennon and Paul McCartney 12.39
Dan Leno (George Galvin) 12.40
Alan Jay Lerner 12.41
Doris Lessing 12.42
Winifred Mary Letts 12.43
Oscar Levant 12.44
Ros Levenstein 12.45
Viscount Leverhulme (William Hesketh Lever) 12.46
Ada Leverson 12.47
Bernard Levin 12.48
Claude L‚vi-Strauss 12.49
Cecil Day Lewis 12.50
C. S. Lewis 12.51
John Spedan Lewis 12.52
Percy Wyndham Lewis 12.53
Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young 12.54
Sinclair Lewis 12.55
Robert Ley 12.56
Liberace (Wladziu Valentino Liberace) 12.57
Beatrice Lillie 12.58
R. M. Lindner 12.59
Audrey Erskine Lindop 12.60
Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse 12.61
Vachel Lindsay 12.62
Eric Linklater 12.63
Art Linkletter 12.64
Walter Lippmann 12.65
Joan Littlewood and Charles Chilton 12.66
Maxim Litvinov 12.67
Ken Livingstone 12.68
Richard Llewellyn (Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd) 12.69
Jack Llewelyn-Davies 12.70
David Lloyd George (Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor) 12.71
David Lodge 12.72
Frank Loesser 12.73
Jack London (John Griffith London) 12.74
Alice Roosevelt Longworth 12.75
Frederick Lonsdale 12.76
Anita Loos 12.77
Frederico GarcЎa Lorca 12.78
Konrad Lorenz 12.79
Joe Louis 12.80
Terry Lovelock 12.81
Robert Loveman 12.82
David Low 12.83
Amy Lowell 12.84
Robert Lowell 12.85
L. S. Lowry 12.86
Malcolm Lowry 12.87
E. V. Lucas 12.88
George Lucas 12.89
Clare Booth Luce 12.90
Joanna Lumley 12.91
Sir Edwin Lutyens 12.92
Rosa Luxemburg 12.93
Lady Lytton (Pamela Frances Audrey, Countess of Lytton) 12.94
M 13.0
Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long 13.1
Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht 13.2
General Douglas MacArthur 13.3
Dame Rose Macaulay 13.4
General Anthony McAuliffe 13.5
Sir Desmond MacCarthy 13.6
Joe McCarthy 13.7
Joseph McCarthy 13.8
Mary McCarthy 13.9
Paul McCartney 13.10
David McCord 13.11
Horace McCoy 13.12
John McCrae 13.13
Carson McCullers 13.14
Derek McCulloch 13.15
Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) 13.16
Ramsay MacDonald 13.17
A. G. Macdonell 13.18
John McEnroe 13.19
Arthur McEwen 13.20
Roger McGough 13.21
Sir Ian MacGregor 13.22
Jimmy McGregor 13.23
Dennis McHarrie 13.24
Colin MacInnes 13.25
Claude McKay 13.26
Sir Compton Mackenzie 13.27
Joyce McKinney 13.28
Alexander Maclaren 13.29
Alistair Maclean 13.30
Archibald MacLeish 13.31
Irene Rutherford McLeod 13.32
Marshall McLuhan 13.33
Ed McMahon 13.34
Harold Macmillan (Lord Stockton) 13.35
Louis MacNeice 13.36
Salvador de Madariaga 13.37
Maurice Maeterlinck 13.38
John Gillespie Magee 13.39
Magnus Magnusson 13.40
Sir John Pentland Mahaffy 13.41
Gustav Mahler 13.42
Derek Mahon 13.43
Norman Mailer 13.44
Bernard Malamud 13.45
George Leigh Mallory 13.46
Andr‚ Malraux 13.47
Lord Mancroft (Baron Mancroft) 13.48
Winnie Mandela 13.49
Osip Mandelstam 13.50
Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles 13.51
Joseph L. Mankiewicz 13.52
Thomas Mann 13.53
Katherine Mansfield (Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp) 13.54
Mao Tse-Tung 13.55
Edwin Markham 13.56
Dewey 'Pigmeat' Markham 13.57
Johnny Marks 13.58
Don Marquis 13.59
Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot 13.60
Arthur Marshall 13.61
Thomas R. Marshall 13.62
Dean Martin 13.63
Holt Marvell 13.64
Chico Marx 13.65
Groucho Marx 13.66
Queen Mary 13.67
Eric Maschwitz 13.68
John Masefield 13.69
Donald Mason 13.70
Sir James Mathew 13.71
Melissa Mathison 13.72
Henri Matisse 13.73
Reginald Maudling 13.74
W. Somerset Maugham 13.75
Bill Mauldin 13.76
James Maxton 13.77
John May 13.78
Percy Mayfield 13.79
Charles H. Mayo 13.80
Margaret Mead 13.81
Shepherd Mead 13.82
Hughes Mearns 13.83
Dame Nellie Melba (Helen Porter Mitchell) 13.84
H. L. Mencken 13.85
David Mercer 13.86
Johnny Mercer 13.87
Bob Merrill 13.88
Dixon Lanier Merritt 13.89
Viola Meynell 13.90
Princess Michael of Kent 13.91
George Mikes 13.92
Edna St Vincent Millay 13.93
Alice Duer Miller 13.94
Arthur Miller 13.95
Henry Miller 13.96
Jonathan Miller 13.97
Spike Milligan (Terence Alan Milligan) 13.98
A. J. Mills, Fred Godfrey, and Bennett Scott 13.99
Irving Mills 13.100
A. A. Milne 13.101
Lord Milner (Alfred, Viscount Milner) 13.102
Adrian Mitchell 13.103
Joni Mitchell 13.104
Margaret Mitchell 13.105
Jessica Mitford 13.106
Nancy Mitford 13.107
Addison Mizner 13.108
Wilson Mizner 13.109
Walter Mondale 13.110
William Cosmo Monkhouse 13.111
Harold Monro 13.112
Marilyn Monroe 13.113
C. E. Montague 13.114
Field-Marshal Montgomery (Viscount Montgomery of Alamein) 13.115
George Moore 13.116
Marianne Moore 13.117
Larry Morey 13.118
Robin Morgan 13.119
Christian Morgenstern 13.120
Christopher Morley 13.121
Lord Morley (John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn) 13.122
Desmond Morris 13.123
Herbert Morrison (Baron Morrison of Lambeth) 13.124
Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore 13.125
R. F. Morrison 13.126
Dwight Morrow 13.127
John Mortimer 13.128
J. B. Morton ('Beachcomber') 13.129
Rogers Morton 13.130
Sir Oswald Mosley 13.131
Lord Louis Mountbatten (Viscount Mountbatten of Burma) 13.132
Lord Moynihan (Berkeley Moynihan, Baron Moynihan) 13.133
Robert Mugabe 13.134
Kitty Muggeridge 13.135
Malcolm Muggeridge 13.136
Edwin Muir 13.137
Herbert J. Muller 13.138
Ethel Watts Mumford, Oliver Herford, and Addison Mizner 13.139
Lewis Mumford 13.140
Sir Alfred Munnings 13.141
Richard Murdoch, and Kenneth Horne 13.142
C. W. Murphy and Will Letters 13.143
Ed Murphy 13.144
Fred Murray 13.145
Edward R. Murrow 13.146
Benito Mussolini 13.147
A. J. Muste 13.148
N 14.0
Vladimir Nabokov 14.1
Ralph Nader 14.2
Sarojini Naidu 14.3
Fridtjof Nansen 14.4
Ogden Nash 14.5
George Jean Nathan 14.6
Terry Nation 14.7
James Ball Naylor 14.8
Jawaharlal Nehru 14.9
Allan Nevins 14.10
Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse 14.11
Huey Newton 14.12
Vivian Nicholson 14.13
Sir Harold Nicolson 14.14
Reinhold Niebuhr 14.15
Carl Nielsen 14.16
Martin Niem”ller 14.17
Florence Nightingale 14.18
Richard Milhous Nixon 14.19
David Nobbs 14.20
Milton Nobles 14.21
Albert J. Nock 14.22
Frank Norman and Lionel Bart 14.23
Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe) 14.24
Jack Norworth 14.25
Alfred Noyes 14.26
Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye) 14.27
O 15.0
Captain Lawrence Oates 15.1
Edna O'Brien 15.2
Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan or O Nuallain) 15.3
Sean O'Casey 15.4
Edwin O'Connor 15.5
Se n O'Faol in 15.6
David Ogilvy 15.7
Geoffrey O'Hara 15.8
John O'Hara 15.9
Patrick O'Keefe 15.10
Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr. 15.11
Frederick Scott Oliver 15.12
Laurence Olivier (Baron Olivier of Brighton) 15.13
Frank Ward O'Malley 15.14
Mary O'Malley 15.15
Eugene O'Neill 15.16
Brian O'Nolan 15.17
J. Robert Oppenheimer 15.18
Susie Orbach 15.19
Baroness Orczy 15.20
David Ormsby Gore 15.21
Jos‚ Ortega y Gasset 15.22
Joe Orton 15.23
George Orwell (Eric Blair) 15.24
John Osborne 15.25
Sir William Osler 15.26
Peter Demianovich Ouspensky 15.27
David Owen 15.28
Wilfred Owen 15.29
Oxford and Asquith, Countess of 15.30
Oxford and Asquith, Earl of 15.31
P 16.0
Vance Packard 16.1
William Tyler Page 16.2
Reginald Paget 16.3
Gerald Page-Wood 16.4
Revd Ian Paisley 16.5
Michael Palin 16.6
Norman Panama and Melvin Frank 16.7
Dame Christabel Pankhurst 16.8
Emmeline Pankhurst 16.9
Emmeline Pankhurst, Dame Christabel Pankhurst, and Annie Kenney 16.10
Charlie Parker 16.11
Dorothy Parker 16.12
Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, and Robert Carson 16.13
Ross Parker and Hugh Charles 16.14
C. Northcote Parkinson 16.15
'Banjo' Paterson (Andrew Barton Paterson) 16.16
Alan Paton 16.17
Norman Vincent Peale 16.18
Charles S. Pearce 16.19
Hesketh Pearson 16.20
Lester Pearson 16.21
Charles P‚guy 16.22
Vladimir Peniakoff 16.23
William H. Penn 16.24
S. J. Perelman 16.25
S. J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, and Arthur Sheekman 16.26
Carl Perkins 16.27
Frances Perkins 16.28
Juan Perўn 16.29
Ted Persons 16.30
Henri Philippe P‚tain 16.31
Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull 16.32
Kim Philby (Harold Adrian Russell Philby) 16.33
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 16.34
Morgan Phillips 16.35
Stephen Phillips 16.36
Eden Phillpotts 16.37
Pablo Picasso 16.38
Wilfred Pickles 16.39
Harold Pinter 16.40
Luigi Pirandello 16.41
Armand J. Piron 16.42
Robert Pirosh, George Seaton, and George Oppenheimer 16.43
Robert M. Pirsig 16.44
Walter B. Pitkin 16.45
Ruth Pitter 16.46
Sylvia Plath 16.47
William Plomer 16.48
Henri Poincar‚ 16.49
Georges Pompidou 16.50
Arthur Ponsonby (first Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede) 16.51
Sir Karl Popper 16.52
Cole Porter 16.53
Beatrix Potter 16.54
Gillie Potter (Hugh William Peel) 16.55
Stephen Potter 16.56
Ezra Pound 16.57
Anthony Powell 16.58
Enoch Powell 16.59
Sandy Powell 16.60
Vince Powell and Harry Driver 16.61
Jacques Pr‚vert 16.62
J. B. Priestley 16.63
V. S. Pritchett 16.64
Marcel Proust 16.65
Olive Higgins Prouty 16.66
John Pudney 16.67
Mario Puzo 16.68
Q 17.0
Q 17.1
Salvatore Quasimodo 17.2
Peter Quennell 17.3
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (often used the pseudonym 'Q') 17.4
R 18.0
James Rado and Gerome Ragni 18.1
John Rae 18.2
Milton Rakove 18.3
Sir Walter Raleigh 18.4
Srinivasa Ramanujan 18.5
John Crowe Ransom 18.6
Arthur Ransome 18.7
Frederic Raphael 18.8
Terence Rattigan 18.9
Gwen Raverat 18.10
Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank 18.11
Ted Ray (Charles Olden) 18.12
Sam Rayburn 18.13
Sir Herbert Read 18.14
Nancy Reagan 18.15
Ronald Reagan 18.16
Erell Reaves 18.17
Henry Reed 18.18
John Reed 18.19
Max Reger 18.20
Charles A. Reich 18.21
Keith Reid and Gary Brooker 18.22
Erich Maria Remarque 18.23
Dr Montague John Rendall 18.24
James Reston 18.25
David Reuben 18.26
Charles Revson 18.27
Malvina Reynolds 18.28
Quentin Reynolds 18.29
Cecil Rhodes 18.30
Jean Rhys (Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams) 18.31
Grantland Rice 18.32
Tim Rice 18.33
Mandy Rice-Davies 18.34
Dicky Richards 18.35
Frank Richards (Charles Hamilton) 18.36
I. A. Richards 18.37
Sir Ralph Richardson 18.38
Hans Richter 18.39
Rainer Maria Rilke 18.40
Hal Riney 18.41
Robert L. Ripley 18.42
C‚sar Ritz 18.43
Joan Riviere 18.44
Lord Robbins (Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins) 18.45
Leo Robin 18.46
Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger 18.47
Edwin Arlington Robinson 18.48
Rt. Rev John Robinson (Bishop of Woolwich) 18.49
John D. Rockefeller 18.50
Knute Rockne 18.51
Cecil Rodd 18.52
Gene Roddenberry 18.53
Theodore Roethke 18.54
Will Rogers 18.55
Frederick William Rolfe ('Baron Corvo') 18.56
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli 18.57
Eleanor Roosevelt 18.58
Franklin D. Roosevelt 18.59
Theodore Roosevelt 18.60
Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber 18.61
Billy Rose 18.62
Billy Rose and Marty Bloom 18.63
Billy Rose and Willie Raskin 18.64
William Rose 18.65
Lord Rosebery (Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery) 18.66
Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg 18.67
Alan S. C. Ross 18.68
Harold Ross 18.69
Sir Ronald Ross 18.70
Jean Rostand 18.71
Leo Rosten 18.72
Philip Roth 18.73
Dan Rowan and Dick Martin 18.74
Helen Rowland 18.75
Richard Rowland 18.76
Maude Royden 18.77
Naomi Royde-Smith 18.78
Paul Alfred Rubens 18.79
Damon Runyon 18.80
Dean Rusk 18.81
Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William, third Earl Russell) 18.82
Dora Russell (Countess Russell) 18.83
George William Russell 18.84
John Russell 18.85
Ernest Rutherford (Baron Rutherford of Nelson) 18.86
Gilbert Ryle 18.87
S 19.0
Rafael Sabatini 19.1
Oliver Sacks 19.2
Victoria ('Vita') Sackville-West 19.3
Fran‡oise Sagan 19.4
Antoine de Saint-Exup‚ry 19.5
George Saintsbury 19.6
Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) 19.7
J. D. Salinger 19.8
Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, fifth Marquess of Salisbury) 19.9
Anthony Sampson 19.10
Lord Samuel (Herbert Louis, first Viscount Samuel) 19.11
Carl Sandburg 19.12
Henry 'Red' Sanders 19.13
William Sansom 19.14
George Santayana 19.15
'Sapper' (Herman Cyril MacNeile) 19.16
John Singer Sargent 19.17
Leslie Sarony 19.18
Nathalie Sarraute 19.19
Jean-Paul Sartre 19.20
Siegfried Sassoon 19.21
Erik Satie 19.22
Telly Savalas 19.23
Dorothy L. Sayers 19.24
Al Scalpone 19.25
Hugh Scanlon (Baron Scanlon) 19.26
Arthur Scargill 19.27
Age Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, and Sergio Leone 19.28
Moritz Schlick 19.29
Artur Schnabel 19.30
Arnold Schoenberg 19.31
Budd Schulberg 19.32
Diane B. Schulder 19.33
E. F. Schumacher 19.34
Albert Schweitzer 19.35
Kurt Schwitters 19.36
Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin 19.37
C. P. Scott 19.38
Paul Scott 19.39
Robert Falcon Scott 19.40
Florida Scott-Maxwell 19.41
Alan Seeger 19.42
Pete Seeger 19.43
Erich Segal 19.44
W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman 19.45
Robert W. Service 19.46
Anne Sexton 19.47
James Seymour and Rian James 19.48
Peter Shaffer 19.49
Eileen Shanahan 19.50
Bill Shankly 19.51
Tom Sharpe 19.52
George Bernard Shaw 19.53
Sir Hartley Shawcross (Baron Shawcross) 19.54
Patrick Shaw-Stewart 19.55
Gloria Shayne 19.56
E. A. Sheppard 19.57
Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart 19.58
Emanuel Shinwell (Baron Shinwell) 19.59
Jean Sibelius 19.60
Walter Sickert 19.61
Maurice Sigler and Al Hoffman 19.62
Alan Sillitoe 19.63
Frank Silver and Irving Cohn 19.64
Georges Simenon 19.65
James Simmons 19.66
Paul Simon 19.67
Harold Simpson 19.68
Kirke Simpson 19.69
N. F. Simpson 19.70
Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake 19.71
C. H. Sisson 19.72
Dame Edith Sitwell 19.73
Sir Osbert Sitwell 19.74
'Red Skelton' (Richard Skelton) 19.75
B. F. Skinner 19.76
Elizabeth Smart 19.77
Alfred Emanuel Smith 19.78
Sir Cyril Smith 19.79
Dodie Smith 19.80
Edgar Smith 19.81
F. E. Smith (Earl of Birkenhead) 19.82
Ian Smith 19.83
Logan Pearsall Smith 19.84
Stevie Smith (Florence Margaret Smith) 19.85
John Snagge 19.86
C. P. Snow (Baron Snow of Leicester) 19.87
Philip Snowden (Viscount Snowden) 19.88
Alexander Solzhenitsyn 19.89
Anastasio Somoza 19.90
Stephen Sondheim 19.91
Susan Sontag 19.92
Donald Soper (Baron Soper) 19.93
Charles Hamilton Sorley 19.94
Henry D. Spalding 19.95
Muriel Spark 19.96
John Sparrow 19.97
Countess Spencer (Raine Spencer) 19.98
Sir Stanley Spencer 19.99
Stephen Spender 19.100
Oswald Spengler 19.101
Steven Spielberg 19.102
Dr Benjamin Spock 19.103
William Archibald Spooner 19.104
Sir Cecil Spring Rice 19.105
Bruce Springsteen 19.106
Sir J. C. Squire 19.107
Joseph Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) 19.108
Charles E. Stanton 19.109
Frank L. Stanton 19.110
Dame Freya Stark 19.111
Enid Starkie 19.112
Christina Stead 19.113
Sir David Steel 19.114
Lincoln Steffens 19.115
Gertrude Stein 19.116
John Steinbeck 19.117
Gloria Steinem 19.118
James Stephens 19.119
Andrew B. Sterling 19.120
Wallace Stevens 19.121
Adlai Stevenson 19.122
Anne Stevenson 19.123
Caskie Stinnett 19.124
Rt. Revd Mervyn Stockwood 19.125
Tom Stoppard 19.126
Lytton Strachey 19.127
Igor Stravinsky 19.128
Simeon Strunsky 19.129
G. A. Studdert Kennedy 19.130
Terry Sullivan 19.131
Arthur Hays Sulzberger 19.132
Edith Summerskill 19.133
Jacqueline Susann (Mrs Irving Mansfield) 19.134
Hannen Swaffer 19.135
Herbert Bayard Swope 19.136
Eric Sykes and Max Bygraves 19.137
John Millington Synge 19.138
Thomas Szasz 19.139
George Szell 19.140
Albert von Szent-Gy”rgyi 19.141
T 20.0
Sir Rabindranath Tagore 20.1
Nellie Talbot 20.2
S. G. Tallentyre (E. Beatrice Hall) 20.3
Booth Tarkington 20.4
A. J. P. Taylor 20.5
Bert Leston Taylor 20.6
Norman Tebbit 20.7
Archbishop William Temple 20.8
A. S. J. Tessimond 20.9
Margaret Thatcher 20.10
Sam Theard and Fleecie Moore 20.11
Diane Thomas 20.12
Dylan Thomas 20.13
Edward Thomas 20.14
Gwyn Thomas 20.15
Francis Thompson 20.16
Hunter S. Thompson 20.17
Lord Thomson (Roy Herbert Thomson, Baron Thomson of Fleet) 20.18
Jeremy Thorpe 20.19
James Thurber 20.20
Paul Tillich 20.21
Dion Titheradge 20.22
Alvin Toffler 20.23
J. R. R. Tolkien 20.24
Nicholas Tomalin 20.25
Barry Took and Marty Feldman 20.26
Sue Townsend 20.27
Pete Townshend 20.28
Polly Toynbee 20.29
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree 20.30
Herbert Trench 20.31
G. M. Trevelyan 20.32
Lionel Trilling 20.33
Tommy Trinder 20.34
Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) 20.35
Harry S. Truman 20.36
Barbara W. Tuchman 20.37
Sophie Tucker 20.38
Walter James Redfern Turner 20.39
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) 20.40
Kenneth Tynan 20.41
U 21.0
Miguel de Unamuno 21.1
John Updike 21.2
Sir Peter Ustinov 21.3
V 22.0
Paul Val‚ry 22.1
Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss 22.2
Vivien van Damm 22.3
Laurens van der Post 22.4
Bartolomeo Vanzetti 22.5
Harry Vaughan 22.6
Ralph Vaughan Williams 22.7
Thorstein Veblen 22.8
Gore Vidal 22.9
King Vidor 22.10
Jos‚ Antonio Viera Gallo 22.11
W 23.0
John Wain 23.1
Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay 23.2
Prince of Wales 23.3
Arthur Waley 23.4
Edgar Wallace 23.5
George Wallace 23.6
Henry Wallace 23.7
Graham Wallas 23.8
Sir Hugh Walpole 23.9
Andy Warhol 23.10
Jack Warner (Horace Waters) 23.11
Ned Washington 23.12
Sir William Watson 23.13
Evelyn Waugh 23.14
Frederick Weatherly 23.15
Beatrice Webb 23.16
Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason 23.17
Jim Webb 23.18
Sidney Webb (Baron Passfield) 23.19
Sidney Webb (Baron Passfield) and Beatrice Webb 23.20
Simone Weil 23.21
Johnny Weissmuller 23.22
Thomas Earle Welby 23.23
Fay Weldon 23.24
Colin Welland 23.25
Orson Welles 23.26
H. G. Wells 23.27
Arnold Wesker 23.28
Mae West 23.29
Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Fairfield) 23.30
Edith Wharton 23.31
E. B. White 23.32
T. H. White 23.33
Alfred North Whitehead 23.34
Bertrand Whitehead 23.35
Katharine Whitehorn 23.36
George Whiting 23.37
Gough Whitlam 23.38
Charlotte Whitton 23.39
William H. Whyte 23.40
Anna Wickham (Edith Alice Mary Harper) 23.41
Richard Wilbur 23.42
Billy Wilder (Samuel Wilder) 23.43
Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond 23.44
Thornton Wilder 23.45
Kaiser Wilhelm II 23.46
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle 23.47
Harry Williams 23.48
Kenneth Williams 23.49
Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams) 23.50
William Carlos Williams 23.51
Ted Willis (Edward Henry Willis, Baron Willis of Chislehurst) 23.52
Wendell Willkie 23.53
Angus Wilson 23.54
Charles E. Wilson 23.55
Edmund Wilson 23.56
Harold Wilson (Baron Wilson of Rievaulx) 23.57
McLandburgh Wilson 23.58
Sandy Wilson 23.59
Woodrow Wilson 23.60
Robb Wilton 23.61
Arthur Wimperis 23.62
Owen Wister 23.63
Ludwig Wittgenstein 23.64
P. G. Wodehouse 23.65
Humbert Wolfe 23.66
Thomas Wolfe 23.67
Tom Wolfe 23.68
Woodbine Willie 23.69
Lt.-Commander Thomas Woodroofe 23.70
Harry Woods 23.71
Virginia Woolf 23.72
Alexander Woollcott 23.73
Frank Lloyd Wright 23.74
Woodrow Wyatt (Baron Wyatt) 23.75
Laurie Wyman 23.76
George Wyndham 23.77
Tammy Wynette (Wynette Pugh) and Billy Sherrill 23.78
Y 24.0
R. J. Yeatman 24.1
W. B. Yeats 24.2
Jack Yellen 24.3
Michael Young 24.4
Waldemar Young et al. 24.5
Z 25.0
Darryl F. Zanuck 25.1
Emiliano Zapata 25.2
Frank Zappa 25.3
Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale 25.4
Ronald L. Ziegler 25.5
Grigori Zinoviev 25.6
1.0 A
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1.1 Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (Louis Francis Cristillo)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bud Abbott 1895-1974
Lou Costello 1906-1959
Abbott: Now, on the St Louis team we have Who's on first, What's on
second, I Don't Know is on third.
Costello: That's what I want to find out.
Naughty Nineties (1945 film), in R. J. Anobile Who's On First? (1973)
p. 224
I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
But not when it ripens in a tumour;
And healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
In limbs that fester are not springlike.
A Small Desperation (1968) "Pathology of Colours"
So in the simple blessing of a rainbow,
In the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror,
I have seen visible, Death's artifact
Like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked.
A Small Desperation (1968) "Pathology of Colours"
That Greek one then is my hero, who watched the bath water rise above his
navel and rushed out naked, "I found it, I found it" into the street in
all his shining, and forgot that others would only stare at his genitals.
Walking under Water (1952) "Letter to Alex Comfort"
Jane and I got mixed up with a television show--or as we call it back east
here: TV--a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible Vaudeville.
However, it is our latest medium--we call it a medium because nothing's
well done. It was discovered, I suppose you've heard, by a man named
Fulton Berle, and it has already revolutionized social grace by cutting
down parlour conversation to two sentences: "What's on television?" and
"Good night."
Letter to Groucho Marx, in The Groucho Letters (1967) p. 114
1.4 Dean Acheson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1971
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not
always easy to achieve.
In Observer 21 June 1970
I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful
employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public
office.
In Time 22 Dec. 1952
Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.
Speech at the Military Academy, West Point, 5 Dec. 1962, in Vital
Speeches 1 Jan. 1963, p. 163
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the
writer.
In Wall Street Journal 8 Sept. 1977
1.5 J. R. Ackerley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1967
I was born in 1896 and my parents were married in 1919.
My Father and Myself (1968) ch. 1
1.6 Douglas Adams
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1952-
Don't panic.
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) preface
"Life," said Marvin, "don't talk to me about Life."
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) ch. 11
And of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left
hand side.
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) ch. 13
The Answer to the Great Question Of....Life, the Universe and
Everything....Is....Forty-two.
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) ch. 27
"The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second
ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't
enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."
Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) ch. 18
1.7 Frank Adams and Will M. Hough
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I wonder who's kissing her now.
Title of song (1909)
1.8 Franklin P. Adams
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1881-1960
When the political columnists say "Every thinking man" they mean
themselves, and when candidates appeal to "Every intelligent voter" they
mean everybody who is going to vote for them.
Nods and Becks (1944) p. 3
Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead centre of middle age. It
occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to
the net.
Nods and Becks (1944) p. 53
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who
believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of
the people all of the time.
Nods and Becks (1944) p. 74
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote
against somebody rather than for somebody.
Nods and Becks (1944) p. 206
1.9 Henry Brooks Adams
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1838-1918
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organization of hatreds.
Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 1
A friend in power is a friend lost.
Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 7
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 16
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a
rivalry of aim.
Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 20
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know
how to learn.
Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 21
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Education of Henry Adams (1907) ch. 22
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the
human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.
Letter 11 Apr. 1862, in Letters of Henry Adams (1982) vol. 1, p. 290
1.10 Harold Adamson
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1906-1980
Comin' in on a wing and a pray'r.
Title of song (1943)
1.11 George Ade
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1944
"Whom are you?" he asked, for he had attended business college.
Chicago Record 16 Mar. 1898, "The Steel Box"
Anybody can Win, unless there happens to be a Second Entry.
Fables in Slang (1900) p. 133
After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write
for posterity.
Fables in Slang (1900) p. 158
If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable.
Forty Modern Fables (1901) p. 218
R-E-M-O-R-S-E!
Those dry Martinis did the work for me;
Last night at twelve I felt immense,
Today I feel like thirty cents.
My eyes are bleared, my coppers hot,
I'll try to eat, but I cannot.
It is no time for mirth and laughter,
The cold, gray dawn of the morning after.
Sultan of Sulu (1903) act 2, p. 63
1.12 Konrad Adenauer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1967
A thick skin is a gift from God.
In New York Times 30 Dec. 1959, p. 5
1.13 Alfred Adler
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1937
It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
In Phyllis Bottome Alfred Adler (1939) p. 76
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie,
and even to murder, for the truth.
Problems of Neurosis (1929) ch. 2
1.15 AE (A.E., ’) (George William Russell)
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1867-1935
In ancient shadows and twilights
Where childhood had strayed,
The world's great sorrows were born
And its heroes were made.
In the lost boyhood of Judas
Christ was betrayed.
Vale and Other Poems (1931) "Germinal"
1.16 Herbert Agar
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1897-1980
The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men
prefer not to hear.
Time for Greatness (1942) ch. 7
1.17 James Agate
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1877-1947
I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and
I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an
actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not
a bed to be made and re-made.
Ego 6 (1944) 9 June 1943
1.18 Spiro T. Agnew
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-
I didn't say I wouldn't go into ghetto areas. I've been in many of them
and to some extent I would have to say this: If you've seen one city slum
you've seen them all.
In Detroit Free Press 19 Oct. 1968
A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of
impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
Speech in New Orleans, 19 Oct. 1969, in Frankly Speaking (1970) ch. 3
1.19 Max Aitken
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Rien n'est plus dangereux qu'une id‚e,quand on n'a qu'une id‚e.
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.
Propos sur la religion (Remarks on Religion, 1938) no. 74
1.22 Edward Albee
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1928-
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Title of play (1962). Cf. Frank E. Churchill
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) act 1
1.23 Richard Aldington
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1892-1962
Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is
a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill.
Colonel's Daughter (1931) pt. 1, ch. 6
1.24 Brian Aldiss
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1925-
Keep violence in the mind
Where it belongs.
Barefoot in the Head (1969) (last lines of concluding poem "Charteris")
1.25 Nelson Algren
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1909-
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called
Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
In Newsweek 2 July 1956
A walk on the wild side.
Title of novel (1956)
I got a glimpse into the uses of a certain kind of criticism this past
summer at a writers' conference into how the avocation of assessing the
failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood,
providing you back it up with a Ph.D. I saw how it was possible to gain a
chair of literature on no qualification other than persistence in nipping
the heels of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. I know, of course, that
there are true critics, one or two. For the rest all I can say is, Deal
around me.
In Malcolm Cowley (ed.) Writers at Work (1958) 1st Ser. p. 222
1.26 Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1942-
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Catch-phrase used from circa 1964, in G. Sullivan Cassius Clay Story
(1964) ch. 8
I'm the greatest.
Catch-phrase used from 1962, in Louisville Times 16 Nov. 1962
1.27 Fred Allen (John Florence Sullivan)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1956
California is a fine place to live--if you happen to be an orange.
American Magazine Dec. 1945, p. 120
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
In Maurice Zolotow No People like Show People (1951) ch. 8
Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
decide that nothing can be done.
In Laurence J. Peter Quotations for our Time (1978) p. 120
1.28 Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1935-
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
Death (1975) p. 63
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (1972 film)
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the
worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
Love and Death (1975 film)
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much
sleep.
New Republic 31 Aug. 1974 "The Scrolls"
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
New Yorker 27 Dec. 1969 "My Philosophy"
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in
my name at a Swiss bank.
New Yorker 5 Nov. 1973 "Selections from the Allen Notebooks"
On bisexuality: It immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday
night.
New York Times 1 Dec. 1975, p. 33
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction.
Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Side Effects (1980) "My Speech to the Graduates"
Take the money and run.
Title of film (1968)
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as
easily lying down.
Without Feathers (1976) "Early Essays"
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Without Feathers (1976) "Early Essays"
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
Epigraph to Eric Lax Woody Allen and his Comedy (1975)
And my parents finally realize that I'm kidnapped and they snap into
action immediately: They rent out my room.
In Eric Lax Woody Allen and his Comedy (1975) ch. 1
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work....I want to achieve
it through not dying.
In Eric Lax Woody Allen and his Comedy (1975) ch. 12
It was partially my fault that we got divorced.... I tended to place my
wife under a pedestal.
At night-club in Chicago, Mar. 1964, recorded on Woody Allen Volume Two
(Colpix CP 488) side 1, band 6
I must say...a fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go
to bed with me and she said "no."
At night-club in Washington, Apr. 1965, recorded on Woody Allen Volume Two
(Colpix CP 488) side 4, band 6
1.29 Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg) and Marshall Brickman
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Woody Allen 1935-
Marshall Brickman 1941-
That [sex] was the most fun I ever had without laughing.
Annie Hall (1977 film)
Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.
Annie Hall (1977 film)
I feel that life is--is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.
Annie Hall (1977 film)
My brain? It's my second favourite organ.
Sleeper (1973 film)
I'm not the heroic type, really. I was beaten up by Quakers.
Sleeper (1973 film)
Once sex rears its ugly 'ead it's time to steer clear.
Flowers for the Judge (1936) ch. 4
1.31 Joseph Alsop
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.
In Observer 30 Nov. 1952
1.32 Robert Altman
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1922-
After all, what's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a
minority.
In Guardian 11 Apr. 1981
1.33 Leo Amery
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1873-1955
I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I
am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they
are words which, I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is
what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer
fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: "You have sat too long here for
any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with
you. In the name of God, go."
Hansard 7 May 1940, col. 1150. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979)
169:26
Speak for England.
Said to Arthur Greenwood in House of Commons, 2 Sept. 1939, in L. Amery
My Political Life (1955) vol. 3, p. 324
For twenty years he [H. H. Asquith] has held a season-ticket on the line
of least resistance and has gone wherever the train of events has carried
him, lucidly justifying his position at whatever point he has happened to
find himself.
Quarterly Review July 1914, p. 276
The delusion that there are thousands of young people about who are
capable of benefiting from university training, but have somehow failed to
find their way there, is...a necessary component of the expansionist
case....More will mean worse.
Encounter July 1960
The point about white Burgundies is that I hate them myself. I take
whatever my wine supplier will let me have at a good price (which I would
never dream of doing with any other drinkable). I enjoyed seeing those
glasses of Chablis or Pouilly Fuiss‚, so closely resembling a blend of
cold chalk soup and alum cordial with an additive or two to bring it to
the colour of children's pee, being peered and sniffed at, rolled round
the shrinking tongue and forced down somehow by parties of young
technology dons from Cambridge or junior television producers and their
girls.
The Green Man (1969) ch. 1
Dixon...tried to flail his features into some sort of response to humour.
Mentally, however, he was making a different face and promising himself
he'd make it actually when next alone. He'd draw his lower lip in under
his top teeth and by degrees retract his chin as far as possible, all this
while dilating his eyes and nostrils. By these means he would, he was
confident, cause a deep dangerous flush to suffuse his face.
Lucky Jim (1953) ch. 1
Alun's life was coming to consist more and more exclusively of being told
at dictation speed what he knew.
The Old Devils (1986) ch. 7
Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
One Fat Englishman (1963) ch. 3. See also Cyril Connolly (3.85) and
George Orwell (15.24)
He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did
not attend was Catholic.
One Fat Englishman (1963) ch. 8
1.35 Maxwell Anderson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1959
But it's a long, long while
From May to December;
And the days grow short
When you reach September.
September Song (1938 song; music by Kurt Weill)
1.36 Maxwell Anderson and Lawrence Stallings
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Maxwell Anderson 1888-1959
Lawrence Stallings 1894-1968
What price glory?
Title of play (1924)
1.37 Robert Anderson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-
All you're supposed to do is every once in a while give the boys a little
tea and sympathy.
Tea and Sympathy (1957) act 1
1.38 James Anderton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1932-
God works in mysterious ways. Given my love of God and my belief in God
and in Jesus Christ, I have to accept that I may well be used by God in
this way [as a prophet].
In radio interview, 18 Jan. 1987, in Daily Telegraph 19 Jan. 1987
Everywhere I go I see increasing evidence of people swirling about in a
human cesspit of their own making.
Speech at seminar on AIDS, 11 Dec. 1986, in Guardian 12 Dec. 1986
1.39 Sir Norman Angell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1967
The great illusion.
Title of book (1910), first published as "Europe's optical illusion"
(1909), on the futility of war
I know why the caged bird sings.
Title of book (1969), taken from the last line of "Sympathy" by Paul
Laurence Dunbar in Lyrics of Hearthside (1899). Cf. Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (1979) 567:10
1.41 Paul Anka
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1941-
And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full, I've travelled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this. I did it my way.
My Way (1969 song; music by Claude Fran‡ois and Jacques Revaux)
1.42 Princess Anne (HRH the Princess Royal)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1950-
It could be said that the Aids pandemic is a classic own-goal scored by
the human race against itself.
In Daily Telegraph 27 Jan. 1988
Access--your flexible friend.
Advertising slogan for Access credit cards, 1981 onwards, in Nigel Rees
Slogans (1982) p. 91
All the way with LBJ.
US Democratic Party campaign slogan, in Washington Post 4 June 1960
American Express?...That'll do nicely, sir.
Advertisement for American Express credit card, 1970s, in F. Jenkins
Advertising (1985) ch. 1
Arbeit macht frei.
Work liberates.
Words inscribed on the gates of Dachau concentration camp, 1933
Australians wouldn't give a XXXX for anything else.
Advertisement for Castlemaine lager, 1986 onwards, in Philip Kleinman The
Saatchi and Saatchi Story (1987) ch. 5
Ban the bomb.
US anti-nuclear slogan, 1953 onwards, adopted by the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament
A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.
British pacifist slogan (1940)
The best defence against the atom bomb is not to be there when it goes
off.
Contributor to British Army Journal, in Observer 20 Feb. 1949
Better red than dead.
Slogan of nuclear disarmament campaigners, late 1950s
Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.
In Erica Jong Fear of Flying (1973) ch. 1 (epigraph)
A bigger bang for a buck.
Description of Charles E. Wilson's defence policy, in Newsweek 22 Mar.
1954
Black is beautiful.
Slogan of American civil rights campaigners in the mid-1960s, cited in
Newsweek 11 July 1966
Burn, baby, burn.
Black extremist slogan used in Los Angeles riots, August 1965, in Los
Angeles Times 15 Aug 1965, p. 1
The butler did it!
In Nigel Rees Sayings of the Century (1984) p. 45 (as a solution for
detective stories. Rees cannot trace the origin of the phrase, but he
quotes a correspondent who recalls hearing it at a cinema circa 1916)
A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
In Financial Times 31 Jan. 1976
Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.
Studio official's comment on Fred Astaire, in Bob Thomas Astaire (1985)
ch. 3
Can you tell Stork from butter?
Advertisement for Stork margarine, from circa 1956
Careless talk costs lives.
World War II publicity slogan, in J. Darracott and B. Loftus Second World
War Posters (1972) p. 28
Coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Trap the germs in your handkerchief.
1942 health slogan, in J. Darracott and B. Loftus Second World War
Posters (1972) p. 19
[Death is] nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Newsweek, 25 Apr. 1960, p. 70
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate in any way.
1950s instruction on punched cards, found in various forms circa 1935
onwards
Don't ask a man to drink and drive.
UK road safety slogan, from 1964
Don't die of ignorance.
Slogan used in AIDS publicity campaign, 1987: see The Times 9 and 13 Jan.
1987
Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein FЃhrer.
One realm, one people, one leader.
Nazi Party slogan, early 1930s
Even your closest friends won't tell you.
US advertisement for Listerine mouthwash, in Woman's Home Companion Nov.
1923, p. 63
Every picture tells a story.
Advertisement for Doan's Backache Kidney Pills, in Daily Mail 26 Feb.
1904
Expletive deleted.
Submission of Recorded Presidential Conversations to the Committee on the
Judiciary of the House of Representatives by President Richard M. Nixon 30
Apr. 1974, app. 1, p. 2
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to
leap tall buildings at a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird!
It's a plane! It's Superman! Yes, it's Superman! Strange visitor from
another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond
those of mortal men. Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers,
bend steel with his bare hands, and who--disguised as Clark Kent,
mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper--fights a never
ending battle for truth, justice and the American way!
Preamble to Superman, US radio show, 1940 onwards
The following is a copy of Orders issued by the German Emperor on August
19th: "It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your
energies for the immediate present upon one single purpose, and that is
that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to
exterminate first, the treacherous English, walk over General French's
contemptible little army...."
Annexe to B.E.F. [British Expeditionary Force] Routine Orders of 24
September 1914, in Arthur Ponsonby Falsehood in Wartime (1928) ch. 10
(although this is often attributed to Kaiser Wilhelm II, it was most
probably fabricated by the British)
Frankie and Albert were lovers, O Lordy, how they could love.
Swore to be true to each other, true as the stars above;
He was her man, but he done her wrong.
"Frankie and Albert" in John Huston Frankie and Johnny (1930) p. 95 (St
Louis ballad later better known as "Frankie and Johnny")
Full of Eastern promise.
Advertising slogan for Fry's Turkish Delight, 1950s onwards
God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time.
Home in that Rock (Negro spiritual). Cf. James Baldwin 16:14
God is not dead but alive and working on a much less ambitious project.
Graffito quoted in Guardian 26 Nov. 1975
Gotcha!
Headline on the sinking of the General Belgrano, in Sun 4 May 1982
Go to work on an egg.
Advertising slogan for the British Egg Marketing Board, from 1957; perhaps
written by Fay Weldon or Mary Gowing: see Nigel Rees Slogans (1982) p. 133
The Governments of the States parties to this Constitution on behalf of
their peoples declare, that since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in
the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.
Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (1945), in UK Parliamentary Papers 1945-6 vol. 26
The hands that do dishes can be soft as your face, with mild green Fairy
Liquid.
Advertising slogan for Procter & Gamble's washing-up liquid
Hark the herald angels sing
Mrs Simpson's pinched our king.
1936 children's rhyme quoted in letter from Clement Attlee, 26 Dec.
1938, in Kenneth Harris Attlee (1982) ch. 11
Have you heard? The Prime Minister [Lloyd George] has resigned and
Northcliffe has sent for the King.
1919 saying in Hamilton Fyfe Northcliffe, an Intimate Biography (1930)
ch. 16
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Song sung by football supporters etc., 1980s
His [W. S. Gilbert's] foe was folly and his weapon wit.
Inscription on memorial to Gilbert on the Victoria Embankment, London,
1915
I don't like the family Stein!
There is Gert, there is Ep, there is Ein.
Gert's writings are punk,
Ep's statues are junk,
Nor can anyone understand Ein.
In R. Graves and A. Hodge The Long Weekend (1940) ch. 12 (rhyme current in
the USA in the 1920s)
If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, pick it up; and if you can't
pick it up, paint it.
1940s saying, in Paul Dickson The Official Rules (1978) p. 21
If you want to get ahead, get a hat.
Advertising slogan for the Hat Council, UK, 1965
Ils ne passeront pas.
They shall not pass.
Slogan used by French army at defence of Verdun in 1916 ; variously
attributed to Marshal P‚tain and to General Robert Nivelle. Cf. Dolores
Ibarruri 109:18
I'm backing Britain.
Slogan coined by workers at the Colt factory, Surbiton, Surrey and
subsequently used in a national campaign, in The Times 1 Jan. 1968
I'm worried about Jim.
Frequent line in Mrs Dale's Diary, BBC radio series 1948-69: see Denis
Gifford The Golden Age of Radio (1985) p. 179 (where the line is given as
"I'm a little worried about Jim")
The iron lady.
In Sunday Times 25 Jan. 1976 (name given to Margaret Thatcher, then Leader
of the Opposition, by the Soviet defence ministry newspaper Red Star,
which accused her of trying to revive the cold war)
Is your journey really necessary?
1939 slogan (coined to discourage Civil Servants from going home for
Christmas), in Norman Longmate How We Lived Then (1971) ch. 25
It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
Comment by unidentified United States Army Major in Associated Press
Report, New York Times 8 Feb. 1968 [the town referred to is Ben Tre,
Vietnam]
It's for you-hoo!
Slogan for British Telecom television advertisements, 1985 onwards
It's that man again...! At the head of a cavalcade of seven black motor
cars Hitler swept out of his Berlin Chancellery last night on a mystery
journey.
Headline in Daily Express 2 May 1939 [the abbreviation ITMA was used as
title of a BBC radio show from 19 Sept. 1939]
It will play in Peoria.
In New York Times 9 June 1973 (catch-phrase of the Nixon administration)
Je suis Marxiste--tendance Groucho.
I am a Marxist--of the Groucho tendency.
Slogan used at Nanterre in Paris, 1968
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.
Advertisement for Jaws 2 (1978 film)
Kentucky Fried Chicken...."It's finger lickin' good."
American Restaurant Magazine June 1958
King's Moll Reno'd in Wolsey's Home Town.
In Frances Donaldson Edward VIII (1974) ch. 7 (American newspaper headline
referring to Mrs Simpson's divorce proceedings in Ipswich)
Labour isn't working.
In Philip Kleinman The Saatchi and Saatchi Story (1987) ch. 2 (British
Conservative Party slogan, 1978-9, on poster showing a long queue outside
an unemployment office)
LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?
In Jacquin Sanders The Draft and the Vietnam War (1966) ch. 3
(anti-Vietnam marching slogan)
Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
Line coined in 1920s by press agent for Robert Benchley (and often
attributed to Benchley), in Howard Teichmann Smart Alec (1976) ch. 9. Cf.
Mae West 225:10
Let the train take the strain.
British Rail advertising slogan, 1970 onwards
Let your fingers do the walking.
1960s advertisement for Bell system Telephone Directory Yellow Pages, in
Harold S. Sharp Advertising Slogans of America (1984) p. 44
Liberty is always unfinished business.
Title of 36th Annual Report of the American Civil Liberties Union,
July 1955 -30 June 1956
Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
In D. J. Enright (ed.) Faber Book of Fevers and Frets (1989) (graffito in
the London Underground)
Life's better with the Conservatives. Don't let Labour ruin it.
In David Butler and Richard Rose British General Election of 1959 (1960)
ch. 3 (Conservative Party election slogan)
Lloyd George knows my father,
My father knows Lloyd George.
Comic song consisting of these two lines sung over and over again to the
tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers, perhaps originally by Tommy Rhys
Roberts (1910-75); sometimes with "knew" instead of "knows"
Lousy but loyal.
London East End slogan at George V's Jubilee (1935), in Nigel Rees Slogans
(1982)
Mademoiselle from Armenteers,
Hasn't been kissed for forty years,
Hinky, dinky, parley-voo.
Song of World War I, variously ascribed to Edward Rowland and Harry
Carlton
Make do and mend.
Wartime slogan, 1940s
Make love not war.
Student slogan, 1960s
The man from Del Monte says "Yes."
Advertising slogan for tinned fruit, 1985
The man you love to hate.
Billing for Erich von Stroheim in the film The Heart of Humanity (1918),
in Peter Noble Hollywood Scapegoat (1950) ch. 2
Mother may I go and bathe?
Yes, my darling daughter.
Hang your clothes on yonder tree,
But don't go near the water.
In Iona and Peter Opie Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) p. 314.
Cf. Walter de la Mare 66:20
The nearest thing to death in life
Is David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe,
Though underneath that gloomy shell
He does himself extremely well.
In E. Grierson Confessions of a Country Magistrate (1972) p. 35 (rhyme
about Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, said to have been current on the Northern
circuit in the late 1930s)
Nil carborundum illegitimi.
Mock-Latin proverb translated as "Don't let the bastards grind you down";
often simply "nil carborundum" or "illegitimi non carborundum"
No manager ever got fired for buying IBM.
IBM advertising slogan
Nice one, Cyril.
1972 television advertising campaign for Wonderloaf; taken up by
supporters of Cyril Knowles, Tottenham Hotspur footballer; the Spurs team
later made a record featuring the line
No more Latin, no more French,
No more sitting on a hard board bench.
Rhyme used by children at the end of school term: see Iona and Peter Opie
Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) ch. 13; also found with
variants such as: No more Latin, no more Greek, No more cares to make me
squeak
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Graffito, used as title of book by Simone Signoret
Not so much a programme, more a way of life!
Title of BBC television series, 1964
O Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling,
O grave, thy victory?
The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling
For you but not for me.
For You But Not For Me (song of World War I) in S. Louis Guiraud (ed.)
Songs That Won the War (1930). Cf. Corinthians 15:55
Once again we stop the mighty roar of London's traffic and from the great
crowds we bring you some of the interesting people who have come by land,
sea and air to be in town tonight.
In Town Tonight (BBC radio series, 1933-60) introductory words
Power to the people.
Slogan of the Black Panther movement, circa 1968 onwards, in Black Panther
14 Sept. 1968
Puella Rigensis ridebat
Quam tigris in tergo vehebat;
Externa profecta,
Interna revecta,
Risusque cum tigre manebat.
There was a young lady of Riga
Who went for a ride on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And a smile on the face of the tiger.
In R. L. Green (ed.) A Century of Humorous Verse (1959) p. 285
The [or A] quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Sentence used by typists etc. to ensure that all letters of the alphabet
are printing properly: see R. Hunter Middleton's introduction to The Quick
Brown Fox (1945) by Richard H. Templeton Jr.
The rabbit has a charming face:
Its private life is a disgrace.
I really dare not name to you
The awful things that rabbits do.
The Rabbit, in The Week-End Book (1925) p. 171
See the happy moron,
He doesn't give a damn,
I wish I were a moron,
My God! perhaps I am!
Eugenics Review July 1929
She was poor but she was honest
Victim of a rich man's game.
First he loved her, than he left her,
And she lost her maiden name. save
See her on the bridge at midnight,
Saying "Farewell, blighted love."
Then a scream, a splash and goodness,
What is she a-doin' of?
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor wot gets the blame,
It's the rich wot gets the gravy.
Ain't it all a bleedin shame?
She was Poor but she was Honest (song sung by British soldiers in World
War I)
Shome mishtake, shurely?
Catch-phrase in Private Eye magazine, 1980s
Snap! Crackle! Pop!
Slogan for Kellogg's Rice Krispies, from circa 1928
So farewell then....
Frequent opening of poems by "E. J. Thribb" in Private Eye magazine, 1970s
onwards, usually as an obituary
Some television programmes are so much chewing gum for the eyes.
John Mason Brown, quoting a friend of his young son, in interview 28 July
1955, in James Beasley Simpson Best Quotes of '50, '55, '56 (1957) p. 233
Sticks nix hick pix.
Variety 17 July 1935 (headline on lack of interest for farm dramas in
rural areas)
Stop-look-and-listen.
Safety slogan current in the US from 1912
Take me to your leader.
Catch-phrase from science-fiction stories
Tell Sid.
Advertising slogan for the privatization of British Gas, 1986, in Philip
Kleinman The Saatchi and Saatchi Story (1987) ch. 11
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is
an idea whose time has come.
Nation 15 Apr. 1943. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 267:11
There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it hardly becomes [or saveoves] any of us
To talk about the rest of us.
Attributed to many authors, especially Edward Wallis Hoch (1849-1945)
because printed in the Marion Record (Kansas) which he owned, but
disclaimed by him
There was a faith-healer of Deal
Who said, "Although pain isn't real,
If I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel."
The Week-End Book (1925) p. 158
They [Jacob Epstein's sculptures for the former BMA building in the
Strand] are a form of statuary which no careful father would wish his
daughter, or no discerning young man his fianc‚e, to see.
Evening Standard 19 June 1908
They come as a boon and a blessing to men,
The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen.
Advertisement by MacNiven and H. Cameron Ltd., circa 1920
[This film] is so cryptic as to be almost meaningless. If there is a
meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.
The British Board of Film Censors, banning Jean Cocteau's film The
Seashell and the Clergyman (1929), in J. C. Robertson Hidden Cinema (1989)
ch. 1
Though I yield to no one in my admiration for Mr Coolidge, I do wish he
did not look as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
Anonymous remark reported in Alice Roosevelt Longworth Crowded Hours
(1933) ch. 21
To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer.
Farmers' Almanac for 1978 (1977) "Capsules of Wisdom"
Top people take The Times.
Advertising slogan for The Times newspaper from Jan. 1959: see I.
McDonald History of The Times (1984) vol. 5, ch. 16
Tous les €tres humains naissent libres et ‚gaux en dignit‚ et en droits.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) Article 1 (modified from a
draft by Ren‚ Cassin)
Ulster says no.
Slogan coined in response to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 15 Nov. 1985,
in Irish Times 25 Nov. 1985
Vorsprung durch Technik.
Progress through technology.
Advertising slogan for Audi cars, from 1986
Vote early. Vote often.
Chicago (and Irish) election proverb, in David Frost and Michael Shea
Mid-Atlantic Companion (1986) p. 95
Wall St. lays an egg.
Variety 30 Oct. 1929 (headline on the Wall Street Crash)
War will cease when men refuse to fight.
Pacifist slogan, from circa 1936 (often "Wars will cease..."): see
Birmingham Gazette 21 Nov. 1936, p. 3, and Peace News 15 Oct. 1938, p. 12
We are the Ovaltineys,
Little [or Happy] girls and boys.
We are the Ovaltineys (song promoting the drink Ovaltine, from circa
1935)
The weekend starts here.
Catch-phrase of Ready, Steady, Go, British television series, circa 1963
We're number two. We try harder.
Advertising slogan for Avis car rentals
We're here
Because
We're here
Because
We're here
Because we're here.
In John Brophy and Eric Partridge Songs and Slang of the British Soldier
1914-18 (1930) p. 33 (sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne )
We shall not be moved.
Title of song (1931)
We shall not pretend that there is nothing in his long career which those
who respect and admire him would wish otherwise.
The Times 23 Jan. 1901 (leading article on the accession of Edward VII)
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome,
We shall overcome some day.
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day.
We Shall Overcome (song derived from several sources, notably the singers
Zilphia Horton and Pete Seeger)
Who dares wins.
Motto on badge of British Special Air Service regiment, from 1942 (see J.
L. Collins Elite Forces: the SAS (1986) introduction)
Whose finger do you want on the trigger?
Daily Mirror 21 Sept. 1951
Winston is back.
Board of Admiralty signal to the Fleet on Winston Churchill's
reappointment as First Sea Lord, 3 Sept. 1939, in Martin Gilbert Winston
S. Churchill (1976) vol. 5, ch. 53
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err
With her
On some other fur?
In A. Glyn Elinor Glyn (1955) bk. 2
1.44 Jean Anouilh
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-1987
Dieu est avec tout le monde....Et, en fin de compte, il est toujours avec
ceux qui ont beaucoup d'argent et de grosses arm‚es.
God is on everyone's side....And, in the last analysis, he is on the side
with plenty of money and large armies.
L'Alouette (The Lark, 1953) p. 120
Il y a l'amour bien s–r. Et puis il y a la vie, son ennemie.
There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.
ArdЉle(1949) p. 8
Vous savez bien que l'amour, c'est avant tout le don de soi!
You know very well that love is, above all, the gift of oneself!
ArdЉle(1949) p. 79
C'est trЉs jolie la vie, mais cela n'a pas de forme. L'art a pour objet de
lui en donner une pr‚cis‚ment et de faire par tous les artifices
possibles--plus vrai que le vrai.
Life is very nice, but it has no shape. The object of art is actually to
give it some and to do it by every artifice possible--truer than the
truth.
La R‚p‚tition (The Rehearsal, 1950) act 2
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.
Et nos amours, faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne?
La joie venait toujours aprЉs la peine.
Vienne la nuit, sonne l'heure,
Les jours s'en vont, je demeure.
Under Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine.
And our loves, must I remember them?
Joy always comes after pain.
Let night come, ring out the hour,
The days go by, I remain.
Les Soir‚es de Paris Feb. 1912 "Le Pont Mirabeau"
Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse
Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent.
Memories are hunting horns
Whose sound dies on the wind.
Les Soir‚es de Paris Sept. 1912 "Cors de Chasse"
1.46 Sir Edward Appleton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1965
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a
language I don't understand.
In Observer 28 Aug. 1955
1.47 Louis Aragon
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1897-1982
O mois des floraisons mois des m‚tamorphoses
Mai qui fut sans nuage et Juin poignard‚
Je n'oublierai jamais les lilas ni les roses
Ni ceux que le printemps dans ses plis a gard‚.
O month of flowerings, month of metamorphoses,
May without cloud and June that was stabbed,
I shall never forget the lilac and the roses
Nor those whom spring has kept in its folds.
Le CrЉve-C”ur(Heartbreak, 1940) "Les lilas et les roses"
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
In W. H. Auden A Certain World (1970) p. 369
It was as though in those last minutes he [Eichmann] was summing up the
lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us--the
lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) ch. 15
It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a
conservative on the day after the revolution.
New Yorker 12 Sept. 1970, p. 88
1.49 G. D. Armour
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1864-1949
Look here, Steward, if this is coffee, I want tea; but if this is tea,
then I wish for coffee.
Punch 23 July 1902 (cartoon caption)
1.50 Harry Armstrong
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1879-1951
There's an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean,
Where we used to sit and dream, Nellie Dean.
And the waters as they flow
Seem to murmur sweet and low,
"You're my heart's desire; I love you, Nellie Dean."
Nellie Dean (1905 song)
1.51 Louis Armstrong
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1901-1971
All music is folk music, I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.
In New York Times 7 July 1971, p. 41
If you still have to ask...shame on you.
Habitual reply when asked what jazz is, in Max Jones et al. Salute to
Satchmo (1970) p. 25
1.52 Neil Armstrong
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1930-
That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
In New York Times 31 July 1969, p. 20
1.53 Sir Robert Armstrong
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1927-
It [a letter] contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being
economical with the truth.
In Supreme Court, New South Wales, 18 Nov. 1986, in Daily Telegraph 19
Nov. 1986. Cf. Edmund Burke's Two letters on Proposals for Peace (1796)
pt. 1, p. 137: Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatsoever:
But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth.
1.54 Raymond Aron
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-
La pens‚e politique, en France, est r‚trospective ou utopique.
Political thought, in France, is retrospective or utopian.
L'opium des intellectuels (The opium of the intellectuals, 1955) ch. 1
1.55 George Asaf
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1880-1951
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while,
So, pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.
Pack up your Troubles (1915 song; music by Felix Powell)
Mr Salteena was an elderly man of 42 and was fond of asking peaple to stay
with him.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 1
I do hope I shall enjoy myself with you. I am fond of digging in the
garden and I am parshial to ladies if they are nice I suppose it is my
nature. I am not quite a gentleman but you would hardly notice it but
can't be helped anyhow.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 1
You look rather rash my dear your colors dont quite match your face.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 2
My own room is next the bath room said Bernard it is decerated dark red as
I have somber tastes. The bath room has got a tip up bason and a hose
thing for washing your head.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 2
Bernard always had a few prayers in the hall and some whiskey afterwards
as he was rarther pious but Mr Salteena was not very addicted to prayers
so he marched up to bed.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 3
It was a sumpshous spot all done up in gold with plenty of looking
glasses.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 5
Oh I see said the Earl but my own idear is that these things are as piffle
before the wind.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 5
The bearer of this letter is an old friend of mine not quite the right
side of the blanket as they say in fact he is the son of a first rate
butcher but his mother was a decent family called Hyssopps of the Glen so
you see he is not so bad and is desireus of being the correct article.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 5
Ethel patted her hair and looked very sneery.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 8
My life will be sour grapes and ashes without you.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 8
Oh Bernard muttered Ethel this is so sudden. No no cried Bernard and
taking the bull by both horns he kissed her violently on her dainty face.
My bride to be he murmered several times.
Young Visiters (1919) ch. 9
1.58 Isaac Asimov
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1920-
The three fundamental Rules of Robotics....One, a robot may not injure a
human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm....Two...a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except
where such orders would conflict with the First Law...three, a robot must
protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict
with the First or Second Laws.
I, Robot (1950) "Runaround"
1.59 Elizabeth Asquith (Princess Antoine Bibesco)
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1897-1945
Kitchener is a great poster.
In Margot Asquith More Memories (1933) ch. 6
1.60 Herbert Henry Asquith (Earl of Oxford and Asquith)
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1852-1928
We had better wait and see.
Hansard 3 Mar. 1910, col. 972 (expression used in various forms when
answering questions on the Finance Bill)
Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than
spectators [of the approaching war].
Letters to Venetia Stanley (1982) 24 July 1914
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
In Observer 15 Apr. 1923
[The War Office kept three sets of figures:] one to mislead the public,
another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself.
In Alistair Horne Price of Glory (1962) ch. 2
We shall never sheath the sword which we have not lightly drawn until
Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has
sacrificed, until France is adequately secured against the menace of
aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are
placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until the military domination
of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.
Speech at the Guildhall, 9 Nov. 1914, in The Times 10 Nov. 1914
It is fitting that we should have buried the Unknown Prime Minister [Bonar
Law] by the side of the Unknown Soldier.
In Robert Blake The Unknown Prime Minister (1955) p. 531
1.61 Margot Asquith (Countess of Oxford and Asquith)
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1864-1945
It [10 Downing Street] is an inconvenient house with three poor
staircases, and after living there a few weeks I made up my mind that
owing to the impossibility of circulation I could only entertain my
Liberal friends at dinner or at garden parties.
Autobiography (1922) vol. 2, ch. 5
Ettie [Lady Desborough] is an ox: she will be made into Bovril when she
dies.
In Jeanne Mackenzie Children of the Souls (1986) ch. 4
Jean Harlow kept calling Margot Asquith by her first name, or kept trying
to: she pronounced it Margot. Finally Margot set her right. "No, no,
Jean. The t is silent, as in Harlow."
T. S. Matthews Great Tom (1973) ch. 7
The King [George V] told me he would never have died if it had not been
for that fool Dawson of Penn.
In letter from Mark Bonham Carter to Kenneth Rose 23 Oct. 1978, quoted in
Kenneth Rose King George V (1983) ch. 9
Lord Birkenhead is very clever but sometimes his brains go to his head.
In Listener 11 June 1953 "Margot Oxford: a Personal Impression" by Lady
Violet Bonham Carter
She [Lady Desborough] tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
In Listener 11 June 1953 "Margot Oxford: a Personal Impression" by Lady
Violet Bonham Carter
He [Lloyd George?] can't see a belt without hitting below it.
In Listener 11 June 1953 "Margot Oxford: a Personal Impression" by Lady
Violet Bonham Carter
1.62 Raymond Asquith
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1878-1916
The sun like a Bishop's bottom
Rosy and round and hot
Looked down upon us who shot 'em
And down on the devils we shot.
And the stink of the damned dead niggers
Went up to the Lord high God
But we stuck to our starboard triggers
Though we yawned like dying cod.
Letter, 4 Mar. 1900, in J. Jolliffe Raymond Asquith Life and Letters
(1980) p. 64
One reason why I don't drink is because I wish to know when I am having a
good time.
In Christian Herald June 1960, p. 31
I married beneath me, all women do.
In Dictionary of National Biography 1961-1970 (1981) p. 43
After a heated argument on some trivial matter Nancy...shouted, "If I were
your wife I would put poison in your coffee!" Whereupon Winston
[Churchill] with equal heat and sincerity answered, "And if I were your
husband I would drink it."
Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan Glitter and Gold (1952) ch. 7
Jakie, is it my birthday or am I dying?
In J. Grigg Nancy Astor (1980) p. 184
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
Once Around the Sun (1951) 7 Jan.
In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they
were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed
intolerable to the people who lived through them.
Once Around the Sun (1951) 8 Feb.
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital
and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of
cutting each other's throat.
Once Around the Sun (1951) 7 Sept.
1.65 E. L. Atkinson and Apsley Cherry-Garrard
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E. L. Atkinson 1882-1929
Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1882-1959
Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the
Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked
willingly to his death in a blizzard to try and save his comrades, beset
by hardships.
Epitaph on cairn erected in the Antarctic, 15 Nov. 1912, in Apsley
Cherry-Garrard Worst Journey in the World (1922) p. 487
Few thought he was even a starter
There were many who thought themselves smarter
But he ended PM
CH and OM
An earl and a knight of the garter.
Letter to Tom Attlee, 8 Apr. 1956, in Kenneth Harris Attlee (1982) p. 545
(describing himself)
I should be a sad subject for any publicity expert. I have none of the
qualities which create publicity.
In Harold Nicolson Diary (1968) 14 Jan. 1949
I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being
able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.
Hansard 24 Oct. 1950, col. 2705
The voice we heard was that of Mr Churchill but the mind was that of Lord
Beaverbrook.
Speech on radio, 5 June 1945, in Francis Williams Prime Minister Remembers
(1961) ch. 6
I remember he [Winston Churchill] complained once in Opposition that a
matter had been brought up several times in Cabinet and I had to say, "I
must remind the Right Honourable Gentleman that a monologue is not a
decision."
In Francis Williams Prime Minister Remembers (1961) ch. 7
You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign
Affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin. I can assure you there
is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of
silence on your part would be welcome.
Letter to Harold Laski, 20 Aug. 1945, in Francis Williams Prime Minister
Remembers (1961) ch. 11
[Russian Communism is] the illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine
the Great.
Speech at Aarhus University, 11 Apr. 1956, in The Times 12 Apr. 1956
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you
can stop people talking.
Speech at Oxford, 14 June 1957, in The Times 15 June 1957
1.67 W. H. Auden
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1907-1973
Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.
About the House (1966) "Prologue: the Birth of Architecture"
Sob, heavy world,
Sob as you spin
Mantled in mist, remote from the happy.
Age of Anxiety (1947) p. 104
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.
I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"
O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
Another Time (1940) "Epitaph on a Tyrant"
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.
Another Time (1940) "In Memory of Sigmund Freud"
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
You were silly like us: your gift survived it all;
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper; it flows south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
Earth, receive an honoured guest;
William Yeats is laid to rest:
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully
along.
Another Time (1940) "Mus‚e des Beaux Arts"
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
Another Time (1940) "Mus‚e des Beaux Arts"
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Another Time (1940) no. 18, p. 43
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
Another Time (1940) "The Unknown Citizen"
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Another Time (1940) "The Unknown Citizen"
All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what
is called damnation.
A Certain World (1970) "Hell"
Of course, Behaviourism "works." So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense,
down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances,
and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.
A Certain World (1970) "Behaviourism"
A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.
Collected Poems (1976) p. 639
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money
writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.
Dyer's Hand (1963) foreword
Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of
discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between
accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary
limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"
Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"
One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most
of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly
believe their wish has been granted.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Writing"
It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good
deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Writing"
The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not
the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry
cannot celebrate them, because their deeds are concerned with things, not
persons, and are, therefore, speechless. When I find myself in the company
of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into
a drawing room full of dukes.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "The Poet and the City"
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that may
love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the
minds of others in order that they may love me.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms
of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when
one or both parties run out of goods.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave
it behind.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "D. H. Lawrence"
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but
among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
Dyer's Hand (1963) "Notes on the Comic"
At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's
We drank our liquor straight,
Some went upstairs with Margery,
And some, alas, with Kate.
For the Time Being (1944) "The Sea and the Mirror"--"Master and
Boatswain"
My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.
For the Time Being (1944) "The Sea and the Mirror"--"Miranda"
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is the best for man
The second best is a formal order
The dance's pattern, dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down with the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
Letter from Iceland (1937, by Auden and MacNeice) "Letter to William
Coldstream, Esq."
And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching
The apple falling towards England, became aware
Between himself and her of an eternal tie.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 1
Out on the lawn I lie in bed,
Vega conspicuous overhead.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 2
Let the florid music praise,
The flute and the trumpet,
Beauty's conquest of your face:
In that land of flesh and bone,
Where from citadels on high
Her imperial standards fly,
Let the hot sun
Shine on, shine on.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 4
Look, stranger, at this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 5
O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
The soldiers coming.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 6
O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,
O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;
Their boots are heavy on the floor
And their eyes are burning.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 6
A shilling life will give you all the facts.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 13
August for the people and their favourite islands.
Daily the steamers sidle up to meet
The effusive welcome of the pier.
Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 30
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same
as what they most want to do.
In Dag Hammarskj”ld Markings (1964) foreword
I see it often since you've been away:
The island, the veranda, and the fruit;
The tiny steamer breaking from the bay;
The literary mornings with its hoot;
Our ugly comic servant; and then you,
Lovely and willing every afternoon.
New Verse Oct. 1933, p. 15
At the far end of the enormous room
An orchestra is playing to the rich.
New Verse Oct. 1933, p. 15
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word "Intellectual" suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife.
New Year Letter (1961) note to line 1277
This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland border,
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.
Night Mail (1936) in Collected Shorter Poems (1966)
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations.
Night Mail (1936) in Collected Shorter Poems (1966)
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
Nones (1951) "The Fall of Rome"
Private faces in public places
Are wiser and nicer
Than public faces in private places.
Orators (1932) dedication
Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing the intolerable neutral itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
Poems (1930) "Sir, No Man's Enemy"
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
Poems (1930) "Sir, No Man's Enemy"
Let us honour if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.
Poems (1930) "To Christopher Isherwood"
To ask the hard question is simple.
Poems (1933) no. 27
This great society is going smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods!
A culture is no better than its woods.
Shield of Achilles (1955) "Bucolics"
To save your world you asked this man to die:
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
Shield of Achilles (1955) "Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier"
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place.
Shield of Achilles (1955) "The Shield of Achilles"
Tomorrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
Tomorrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But today the struggle.
Spain (1937) p. 11
The stars are dead. The animals will not look:
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
Spain (1937) p. 12
In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited,
Moved to delight by the melody,
White as an orchid she rode quite naked
In an oyster shell on top of the sea.
Three Songs for St Cecilia's Day (1941). Dedicated to Benjamin Britten,
and set to music by Britten as Hymn to St Cecilia , op. 27 (1942)
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Three Songs for St Cecilia's Day (1941)
No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not
sing. An opera plot must be, in both senses of the word, a melodrama.
Times Literary Supplement 2 Nov. 1967, p. 1038
Your cameraman might enjoy himself because my face looks like a
wedding-cake left out in the rain.
In Humphrey Carpenter W. H. Auden (1981) pt. 2, ch. 6
You [Stephen Spender] are so infinitely capable of being humiliated. Art
is born of humiliation.
In Stephen Spender World Within World (1951) ch. 2
1.68 W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
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W. H. Auden 1907-1973
Christopher Isherwood 1904-1986
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read
The Hunter's waking thoughts.
Dog beneath the Skin (1935) chorus following act 2, sc. 2
What's up, Doc?
Catch-phrase in Bugs Bunny cartoons, from circa 1940
1.70 Earl of Avon
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See Sir Anthony Eden (5.4)
1.71 Revd W. Awdry
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1911-
You've a lot to learn about trucks, little Thomas. They are silly things
and must be kept in their place. After pushing them about here for a few
weeks you'll know almost as much about them as Edward. Then you'll be a
Really Useful Engine.
Thomas the Tank Engine (1946) p. 46
1.72 Alan Ayckbourn
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1939-
My mother used to say, Delia, if S-E-X ever rears its ugly head, close
your eyes before you see the rest of it.
Bedroom Farce (1978) act 2
This place, you tell them you're interested in the arts, you get messages
of sympathy.
Chorus of Disapproval (1986) act 2
Do you realize, Mrs Foster, the hours I've put into that woman? When I
met her, you know, she was nothing. Nothing at all. With my own hands I
have built her up. Encouraging her to join the public library and make
use of her non-fiction tickets.
How the Other Half Loves (1972) act 2, sc. 1
I only wanted to make you happy.
Round and Round the Garden (1975) act 2, sc. 2
If you gave Ruth a rose, she'd peel all the petals off to make sure there
weren't any greenfly. And when she'd done that, she'd turn round and say,
do you call that a rose? Look at it, it's all in bits.
Table Manners (1975) act 1, sc. 2
I always feel with Norman that I have him on loan from somewhere. Like one
of his library books.
Table Manners (1975) act 2, sc. 1
1.73 A. J. Ayer
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1910-1989
No moral system can rest solely on authority.
Humanist Outlook (1968) introduction
It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more
rational and that it was all wasted effort.
In Observer 17 Aug. 1986
I am a bunny rabbit,
Sitting in me hutch,
I like to sit up this end,
I don't care for that end, much,
I'm glad tomorrow's Thursday,
'Cause with a bit of luck,
As far as I remember,
That's the day they pass the buck.
Some of Me Poetry (1976) "The Bunny Poem"
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
Some of Me Poetry (1976) "Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth"
I might have been a farmyard hen,
Scratchin' in the sun,
There might have been a crowd of chicks,
After me to run,
There might have been a cockerel fine,
To pay us his respects,
Instead of sittin' here,
Till someone comes and wrings our necks.
I see the Time and Motion clock,
Is sayin' nearly noon,
I 'spec me squirt of water,
Will come flyin' at me soon,
And then me spray of pellets,
Will nearly break me leg,
And I'll bite the wire nettin'
And lay one more bloody egg.
Some of Me Poetry (1976) "The Battery Hen"
Medicinal discovery,
It moves in mighty leaps,
It leapt straight past the common cold
And gave it us for keeps.
Now I'm not a fussy woman,
There's no malice in me eye
But I wish that they could cure
the common cold. That's all. Goodbye.
Some of Me Poetry (1976) "Oh no, I got a cold"
2.0 B
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2.1 Robert Baden-Powell (Baron Baden-Powell)
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1857-1941
The scouts' motto is founded on my initials, it is: be prepared, which
means, you are always to be in a state of readiness in mind and body to do
your duty.
Scouting for Boys (1908) pt. 1
2.2 Joan Baez
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1941-
The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of
non-violence has been the organization of violence.
Daybreak (1970) "What Would You Do If?"
2.3 Sydney D. Bailey
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1916-
It has been said that this Minister [the Lord Privy Seal] is neither a
Lord, nor a privy, nor a seal.
British Parliamentary Democracy (ed. 3, 1971) ch. 8
2.4 Bruce Bairnsfather
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1888-1959
Well, if you knows of a better 'ole, go to it.
Fragments from France (1915) p. 1
She knows, you know!
Catch-phrase used in comedy act, about her friend Cynthia
2.6 James Baldwin
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1924-1987
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if
you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
Esquire May 1961 "Black Boy looks at the White Boy"
The fire next time.
Title of book (1963). Cf. Anonymous 6:12
At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American
white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to be able to
live with himself.
Harper's Magazine Oct. 1953 "Stranger in a Village"
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make
us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time
we got rid of Him.
New Yorker 17 Nov. 1962 "Down at the Cross"
If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.
New York Review of Books 7 Jan. 1971 "Open Letter to my Sister, Angela
Davis"
It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6 or 7 to discover that the
flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has
not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary
Cooper killing off the Indians and, although you are rooting for Gary
Cooper, that the Indians are you.
Speech at Cambridge University, 17 Feb. 1965, in New York Times Magazine 7
March 1965, p. 32
The situation of our youth is not mysterious. Children have never been
very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to
imitate them. They must, they have no other models.
Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a letter from Harlem"
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive
it is to be poor.
Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a letter from Harlem"
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something
people take and people are as free as they want to be.
Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Notes for a Hypothetical Novel"
2.7 Stanley Baldwin (Earl Baldwin of Bewdley)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1867-1947
Do not run up your nose dead against the Pope or the NUM!
In Lord Butler Art of Memory (1982) p. 110
You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of
false motive. Never complain and never explain.
In Harold Nicolson Diary (1967) 21 July 1943
They [parliament] are a lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done
very well out of the war.
In J. M. Keynes Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) ch. 5
A platitude is simply a truth repeated until people get tired of hearing
it.
Hansard 29 May 1924, col. 727
I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is
no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people
may tell him, the bomber will always get through. The only defence is in
offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more
quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.
Hansard 10 Nov. 1932, col. 632
Let us never forget this; since the day of the air, the old frontiers are
gone. When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the
chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier
lies.
Hansard 30 July 1934, col. 2339
I shall be but a short time tonight. I have seldom spoken with greater
regret, for my lips are not yet unsealed. Were these troubles over I would
make case, and I guarantee that not a man would go into the lobby against
us.
Hansard 10 Dec. 1935, col. 856
I put before the whole House my own views with an appalling frankness.
...Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming
and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy
would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything
that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more
certain.
Hansard 12 Nov. 1936, col. 1144
There are three classes which need sanctuary more than others--birds, wild
flowers, and Prime Ministers.
In Observer 24 May 1925
Then comes Winston with his hundred-horse-power mind and what can I do?
In G. M. Young Stanley Baldwin (1952) ch. 11
The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.
In G. M. Young Stanley Baldwin (1952) ch. 13
"Safety first" does not mean a smug self-satisfaction with everything as
it is. It is a warning to all persons who are going to cross a road in
dangerous circumstances.
The Times 21 May 1929
Had the employers of past generations all of them dealt fairly with their
men there would have been no unions.
Speech in Birmingham, 14 Jan. 1931, in The Times 15 Jan. 1931
2.8 Arthur James Balfour (Earl of Balfour)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1848-1930
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the
rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Letter to Lord Rothschild 2 Nov. 1917, in K. Young A. J. Balfour (1963) p.
478
Frank Harris...said..."The fact is, Mr Balfour, all the faults of the age
come from Christianity and journalism." To which Arthur
replied..."Christianity, of course...but why journalism?"
Margot Asquith Autobiography (1920) vol. 1, ch. 10
I never forgive but I always forget.
In R. Blake Conservative Party (1970) ch. 7
I thought he [Churchill] was a young man of promise, but it appears he is
a young man of promises.
In Winston Churchill My Early Life (1930) ch. 17
Biography should be written by an acute enemy.
In Observer 30 Jan. 1927
It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so
few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth.
Letter to Mrs Drew, 19 May 1891, in Some Hawarden Letters (1917) ch. 7
Critics are biased, and so are readers. (Indeed, a critic is a bundle of
biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.) But intelligent readers
soon discover how to allow for the windage of their own and a critic's
prejudices.
Dinosaurs in the Morning (1962) introductory note
The sound of surprise.
Title of book on jazz (1959)
2.10 Pierre Balmain
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1914-1982
The trick of wearing mink is to look as though you were wearing a cloth
coat. The trick of wearing a cloth coat is to look as though you are
wearing mink.
In Observer 25 Dec. 1955
I'm as pure as the driven slush.
Quoted by Maurice Zolotow in Saturday Evening Post 12 Apr. 1947
There is less in this than meets the eye.
In Alexander Woollcott Shouts and Murmurs (1922) ch. 4 (describing a
revival of Maeterlinck's play "Aglavaine and Selysette")
Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I've been using it
for years.
Tallulah (1952) ch. 4
In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending
your left leg, it's modern architecture.
Guardian 20 Feb. 1979
I'm still suffering from the big d‚nouement in [Jeffrey Archer's book] Not
A Penny More when "the three stood motionless like sheep in the stare of a
python." The whole thing keeps me awake at night. Here are these sheep,
gambolling about in the Welsh jungle, when up pops a python. A python,
what's more, who thinks he's a cobra.
Guardian 26 Mar. 1990
2.13 Imamu Amiri Baraka (Everett LeRoi Jones)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1934-
A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people
what to do with their money.
Kulchur Spring 1962 "Tokenism"
A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for
freedom.
Kulchur Spring 1962 "Tokenism"
God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability
and airconditioning.
Midstream (1963) p. 39
2.14 W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce Frederick Cummings)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1919
Give me the man who will surrender the whole world for a moss or a
caterpillar, and impracticable visions for a simple human delight. Yes,
that shall be my practice. I prefer Richard Jefferies to Swedenborg and
Oscar Wilde to Thomas … Kempis.
Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains (1919) "Crying for the Moon"
Am writing an essay on the life-history of insects and have abandoned the
idea of writing on "How Cats Spend their Time."
Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919) 3 Jan. 1903
I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin
and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with
those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy.
Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919) 23 Oct. 1910
2.15 Maurice Baring
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1945
In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does
what it must and the talent which does what it can.
Outline of Russian Literature (1914) ch. 3
2.16 Ronnie Barker
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-
The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can
only mean one thing.
Sauce (1977) "Daddie's Sauce"
2.17 Frederick R. Barnard
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
One picture is worth ten thousand words.
Printers' Ink 10 Mar. 1927
What does this journey seem like to those who aren't British--as they head
towards the land of embarrassment and breakfast?
Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 7
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only
then can he see clearly.
Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 10
Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle
uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiЉre. At least, not in the
English sense. But do not forget that brassiЉre is the French for
life-jacket.
Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 10
Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where
things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not
surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only
problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives,
never your own.
Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 13
2.20 Peter Barnes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1931-
Claire: How do you know you're...God?
Earl of gurney: Simple. When I pray to Him I find I'm talking to
myself.
The Ruling Class (1969) act 1, sc. 4
2.21 Sir J. M. Barrie
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1937
I'm not young enough to know everything.
The Admirable Crichton (performed 1902, pubd. 1914) act 1
His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be
equality in the servants' hall.
The Admirable Crichton (performed 1902, pubd. 1914) act 1
It's my deserts; I'm a second eleven sort of chap.
The Admirable Crichton (performed 1902, pubd. 1914) act 3
Times have changed since a certain author was executed for murdering his
publisher. They say that when the author was on the scaffold he said
goodbye to the minister and to the reporters, and then he saw some
publishers sitting in the front row below, and to them he did not say
goodbye. He said instead, "I'll see you later."
Speech at Aldine Club, New York, 5 Nov. 1896, in Critic 14 Nov. 1896
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and
writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it
is with what he vowed to make it.
The Little Minister (1891) vol. 1, ch. 1
It's grand, and you canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.
The Little Minister (1891) vol. 1, ch. 10
I loathe entering upon explanations to anybody about anything.
My Lady Nicotine (1890) ch. 14
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a
thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the
beginning of fairies.
Peter Pan (1928) act 1
Every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies" there is a little
fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Peter Pan (1928) act 1
To die will be an awfully big adventure.
Peter Pan (1928) act 3. Cf. Charles Frohman
Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe,
clap your hands!
Peter Pan (1928) act 4
That is ever the way. 'Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to
the corpse.
Quality Street (performed 1901, pubd. 1913) act 1
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse
of modern times, one sometimes forgets which.
Sentimental Tommy (1896) ch. 5
Someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in
December.
Rectorial Address at St Andrew's, 3 May 1922, in The Times 4 May 1922
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
Rectorial Address at St Andrew's, 3 May 1922, in The Times 4 May 1922
Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes!
Rectorial Address at St Andrews, 3 May 1922, in The Times 4 May 1922
For several days after my first book was published I carried it about in
my pocket, and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure that the ink
had not faded.
Speech at the Critics' Circle in London, 26 May 1922, in The Times 27 May
1922
Have you ever noticed, Harry, that many jewels make women either
incredibly fat or incredibly thin?
The Twelve-Pound Look and Other Plays (1921) p. 27
One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.
The Twelve-Pound Look and Other Plays (1921) p. 28
Oh the gladness of her gladness when she's glad,
And the sadness of her sadness when she's sad,
But the gladness of her gladness
And the sadness of her sadness
Are as nothing, Charles,
To the badness of her badness when she's bad.
Rosalind in The Twelve-Pound Look and Other Plays (1921) p. 113
Charm...it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need
to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter
what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have
charm for one. But some have charm for none.
What Every Woman Knows (1918) act 1
A young Scotsman of your ability let loose upon the world with њ300, what
could he not do? It's almost appalling to think of; especially if he went
among the English.
What Every Woman Knows (1918) act 1
My lady, there are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman
on the make.
What Every Woman Knows (1918) act 2
You've forgotten the grandest moral attribute of a Scotsman, Maggie, that
he'll do nothing which might damage his career.
What Every Woman Knows (1918) act 2
The tragedy of a man who has found himself out.
What Every Woman Knows (1918) act 4
Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself;
and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It's our only joke. Every
woman knows that.
What Every Woman Knows (1918) act 4
For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the
brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay,
the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
In George Jean Nathan The Theatre in the Fifties (1953) p. 30
2.23 John Barrymore
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1942
He [Barrymore] would quote from Genesis the text which says, "It is not
good for man to be alone," and then add, "But O my God, what a relief."
Alma Power-Waters John Barrymore (1941) ch. 13
My only regret in the theatre is that I could never sit out front and
watch me.
In Eddie Cantor The Way I See It (1959) ch. 2
Die? I should say not, old fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
In Lionel Barrymore We Barrymores (1951) ch. 26
2.25 Karl Barth
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1886-1968
Die Menschen aber waren nie gut, sind es nicht und werden es auch nie
sein.
Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.
Christliche Gemeinde (Christian Community, 1948) p. 36
Whether the angels play only Bach in praising God I am not quite sure; I
am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.
In New York Times 11 Dec. 1968, p. 42
2.26 Roland Barthes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1915-1980
Ce que le public r‚clame, c'est l'image de la passion, non la passion
elle-m€me.
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
Esprit (1952) vol. 20, pt. 10, p. 412 "Le monde o— l'on catche" (The
world of wrestling)
Je crois que l'automobile est aujourd'hui l'‚quivalent assez exact des
grandes cath‚drales gothiques: je veux dire une grande cr‚ation d'‚poque,
con‡ue passionn‚ment par des artistes inconnus, consomm‚e dans son image,
sinon dans son usage, par un peuple entier qui s'approprie en elle un
objet parfaitement magique.
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great
Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with
passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a
whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
Mythologies (1957) "La nouvelle Citro‰n" (The new Citro‰n)
2.27 Bernard Baruch
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1965
To me old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
In Newsweek 29 Aug. 1955
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
In Meyer Berger New York (1960)
Let us not be deceived--we are today in the midst of a cold war.
Speech to South Carolina Legislature 16 Apr. 1947, in New York Times 17
Apr. 1947, p. 21
A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see
if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a
political leader.
In New York Times 21 June 1965, p. 16
You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing,
but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get
better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in forms of
government.
In The Times 20 Aug. 1964
2.28 Jacques Barzun
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-
If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them
how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.
The House of Intellect (1959) ch. 6
Art distils sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in memorable
form--or else it is not art.
The House of Intellect (1959) ch. 6
2.29 L. Frank Baum
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1856-1919
The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick.
Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) ch. 2
Verheiratet sein verlangt immer und Ѓberall die feinsten Kunst der
Unaufrichtigkeit zwischen Mensch und Mensch.
Marriage always demands the finest arts of insincerity possible between
two human beings.
Zwischenfall in Lohwinckel (1930) p. 140, translated by Margaret
Goldsmith as Results of an Accident (1931) p. 140
2.31 Sir Arnold Bax
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1883-1953
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should
make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and
folk-dancing."
Farewell, My Youth (1943) p. 17
2.32 Sir Beverley Baxter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1964
Beaverbrook is so pleased to be in the Government that he is like the town
tart who has finally married the Mayor!
In Sir Henry Channon Chips: the Diaries (1967) 12 June 1940
2.34 David, First Earl Beatty
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1871-1936
There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today [at the
Battle of Jutland].
In S. Roskill Beatty (1980) ch. 8
The German flag will be hauled down at sunset to-day (Thursday) and will
not be hoisted again without permission.
Signal to the Fleet, 21 Nov. 1918, in The Times 22 Nov. 1918
2.35 Lord Beaverbrook (William Maxwell Aitken, first Baron Beaverbrook)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1964
I ran the paper [Daily Express] purely for propaganda, and with no other
purpose.
Evidence to Royal Commission on the Press, 18 Mar. 1948, in A. J. P.
Taylor Beaverbrook (1972) ch. 23
This is my final word. It is time for me to become an apprentice once
more. I have not settled in which direction. But somewhere, sometime soon.
Speech at Dorchester Hotel, 25 May 1964, in A. J. P. Taylor Beaverbrook
(1972) ch. 25
The Flying Scotsman is no less splendid a sight when it travels north to
Edinburgh than when it travels south to London. Mr Baldwin denouncing
sanctions was as dignified as Mr Baldwin imposing them. At times it seemed
that there were two Mr Baldwins on the stage, a prudent Mr Baldwin, who
scented the danger in foolish projects, and a reckless Mr Baldwin, who
plunged into them head down, eyes shut. But there was, in fact, only one
Mr Baldwin, a well-meaning man of indifferent judgement, who, whether he
did right or wrong, was always sustained by a belief that he was acting
for the best.
Daily Express 29 May 1937
The Daily Express declares that Great Britain will not be involved in a
European war this year or next year either.
Daily Express 19 Sept. 1938
He [Lloyd George] did not seem to care which way he travelled providing he
was in the driver's seat.
Decline and Fall of Lloyd George (1963) ch. 7
Now who is responsible for this work of development on which so much
depends? To whom must the praise be given? To the boys in the back rooms.
They do not sit in the limelight. But they are the men who do the work.
Listener 27 Mar. 1941. Cf. Frank Loesser
With the publication of his [Earl Haig's] Private Papers in 1952, he
committed suicide 25 years after his death.
Men and Power (1956) p. xviii
Churchill on top of the wave has in him the stuff of which tyrants are
made.
Politicians and the War (1932) vol. 2, ch. 6
2.36 Carl Becker
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1945
The significance of man is that he is that part of the universe that asks
the question, What is the significance of Man? He alone can stand apart
imaginatively and, regarding himself and the universe in their eternal
aspects, pronounce a judgment: The significance of man is that he is
insignificant and is aware of it.
Progress and Power (1936) ch. 3
2.37 Samuel Beckett
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-1989
It is suicide to be abroad. But what is it to be at home, Mr Tyler, what
is it to be at home? A lingering dissolution.
All That Fall (1957) p. 10
We could have saved sixpence. We have saved fivepence. (Pause) But at what
cost?
All That Fall (1957) p. 25
Clov: Do you believe in the life to come?
Hamm: Mine was always that.
Endgame (1958) p. 35
Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there
willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I
must.
First Love (1973) p. 8
If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
Malone Dies (1958) p. 44
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know,
you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
The Unnamable (1959) p. 418
Nothing to be done.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 1
One of the thieves was saved. (Pause) It's a reasonable percentage.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 1
Estragon: Charming spot. Inspiring prospects. Let's go.
Vladimir: We can't.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 1
He can't think without his hat.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 1
Vladimir: That passed the time.
Estragon: It would have passed in any case.
Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 1
We always find something, eh, Didi, to give us the impression that we
exist?
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 2
We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can
boast as much?
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 2
We all are born mad. Some remain so.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 2
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's
night once more.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 2
The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener.
Waiting for Godot (1955) act 2
2.38 Harry Bedford and Terry Sullivan
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I'm a bit of a ruin that Cromwell knock'd about a bit.
It's a Bit of a Ruin that Cromwell Knocked about a Bit (1920 song; written
for Marie Lloyd)
2.39 Sir Thomas Beecham
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1961
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
In H. Proctor-Gregg Beecham Remembered (1976) pt. 2, p. 154
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish
together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
In Harold Atkins and Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978) p. 27
[The harpsichord] sounds like two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin
roof.
In Harold Atkins and Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978) p. 34
In the first movement alone, of the Seventh Symphony [by Bruckner], I took
note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages.
In Harold Atkins and Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978) p. 50
[Herbert von Karajan is] a kind of musical Malcolm Sargent.
In Harold Atkins and Archie Newman Beecham Stories (1978) p. 61
I am not the greatest conductor in this country. On the other hand I'm
better than any damned foreigner.
In Daily Express 9 Mar. 1961
Musicians did not like the piece [Strauss's Elektra] at all. One eminent
British composer on leaving the theatre was asked what he thought of it.
"Words fail me," he replied, "and I'm going home at once to play the chord
of C major twenty times over to satisfy myself that it still exists."
Mingled Chime (1944) ch. 18
The plain fact is that music per se means nothing; it is sheer sound, and
the interpreter can do no more with it than his own capacities, mental and
spiritual, will allow, and the same applies to the listener.
Mingled Chime (1944) ch. 33
The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it
makes.
In New York Herald Tribune 9 Mar. 1961
Good music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and quits the
memory with difficulty.
Speech, circa 1950, in New York Times 9 Mar. 1961
All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for
unhealthy women.
In Observer 5 May 1946
Hark! the herald angels sing!
Beecham's Pills are just the thing,
Two for a woman, one for a child...
Peace on earth and mercy mild!
In Neville Cardus Sir Thomas Beecham (1961) p. 23
At a rehearsal I let the orchestra play as they like. At the concert I
make them play as I like.
In Neville Cardus Sir Thomas Beecham (1961) p. 111
Dear old Elgar --he is furious with me for drastically cutting his A flat
symphony --it's a very long work, the musical equivalent of the Towers of
St Pancras Station--neo-Gothic, you know.
In Neville Cardus Sir Thomas Beecham (1961) p. 113
I am entirely with you in your obvious reluctance to rehearse on a morning
as chilly and dismal as this--but please do try to keep in touch with us
from time to time.
In Neville Cardus Sir Thomas Beecham (1961) p. 113
Why do we have to have all these third-rate foreign conductors
around--when we have so many second-rate ones of our own?
In L. Ayre Wit of Music (1966) p. 70
2.40 Sir Max Beerbohm
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1956
I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or
defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
And Even Now (1920) "No. 2, The Pines"
One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts
and guests.
And Even Now (1920) "Hosts and Guests"
I maintain that though you would often in the fifteenth century have heard
the snobbish Roman say, in a would-be off-hand tone, "I am dining with the
Borgias tonight," no Roman ever was able to say, "I dined last night with
the Borgias."
And Even Now (1920) "Hosts and Guests"
They so very indubitably are, you know!
Christmas Garland (1912) "Mote in the Middle Distance"
Of course he [William Morris] was a wonderful all-round man, but the act
of walking round him has always tired me.
Letter to S. N. Behrman circa1953, in Conversations with Max (1960) ch. 2
A swear-word in a rustic slum
A simple swear-word is to some,
To Masefield something more.
Fifty Caricatures (1912) no. 12
Not that I had any special reason for hating school! Strange as it may
seem to my readers, I was not unpopular there. I was a modest,
good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
More (1899) "Going Back to School"
Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they
are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at
school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
More (1899) "Going Back to School"
I have the satiric temperament: when I am laughing at anyone I am
generally rather amusing, but when I am praising anyone, I am always
deadly dull.
Saturday Review 28 May 1898
The only tribute a French translator can pay Shakespeare is not to
translate him--even to please Sarah [Bernhardt].
Saturday Review 17 June 1899
"I'm afraid I found [the British Museum] rather a depressing place. It--it
seemed to sap one's vitality." "It does. That's why I go there. The lower
one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art."
Seven Men (1919) "Enoch Soames"
Enter Michael Angelo. Andrea del Sarto appears for a moment at a window.
Pippa passes.
Seven Men (1919) "Savonarola Brown" act 3
Most women are not so young as they are painted.
Yellow Book (1894) vol. 1, p. 67
"After all," as a pretty girl once said to me, "women are a sex by
themselves, so to speak."
Yellow Book (1894) vol. 1, p. 70
Fate wrote her [Queen Caroline of Brunswick] a most tremendous tragedy,
and she played it in tights.
Yellow Book (1894) vol. 3, p. 260
There is always something rather absurd about the past.
Yellow Book (1895) vol. 4, p. 282
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of the period would need a far
less brilliant pen than mine.
Yellow Book (1895) vol. 4, p. 283
None, it is said, of all who revelled with the Regent, was half so wicked
as Lord George Hell.
Yellow Book (1896) vol. 11, p. 11 "Happy Hypocrite" ch. 1
The fading signals and grey eternal walls of that antique station, which,
familiar to them and insignificant, does yet whisper to the tourist the
last enchantments of the Middle Age.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 1
Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking
for a man's footprint.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 2
The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion
that they will come to bad end.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 4
Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 4
You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who
has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 6
Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 7
You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of life has been drawn
from life itself.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 7
He held, too, in his enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right
to exist. But he did often find himself wishing Mr Rhodes had not enabled
them to exercise that right in Oxford.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 8
She was one of the people who say "I don't know anything about music
really, but I know what I like."
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 9. Cf. Henry James 112:3
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by
standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 9
Deeply regret inform your grace last night two black owls came and perched
on battlements remained there through night hooting at dawn flew away none
knows whither awaiting instructions Jellings.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 14
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play. Please answer my
question, to the best of your ability.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 15
Byron!--he would be all forgotten today if he had lived to be a florid old
gentleman with iron-grey whiskers, writing very long, very able letters to
The Times about the Repeal of the Corn Laws.
Zuleika Dobson (1911) ch. 18
He was born an Englishman and remained one for years.
Hostage (1958) act 1
Pat: He was an Anglo-Irishman.
Meg: In the blessed name of God what's that?
Pat: A Protestant with a horse.
Hostage (1958) act 1
Meanwhile I'll sing that famous old song, "The Hound that Caught the Pubic
Hare."
Hostage (1958) act 1
When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialled in my absence and
sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my
absence.
Hostage (1958) act 1
Soldier: What's a mixed infant?
Teresa: A little boy or girl under five years old. They were called
mixed infants because until that time the boys and girls were mixed
together.
Soldier: I wish I'd been a mixed infant.
Hostage (1958) act 2
I am a sociable worker. Have you your testament?
Hostage (1958) act 2
Go on, abuse me--your own husband that took you off the streets on a
Sunday morning, when there wasn't a pub open in the city.
Hostage (1958) act 2
We're here because we're queer
Because we're queer because we're here.
Hostage (1958) act 3
There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
In Dominic Behan My Brother Brendan (1965) p. 158
2.42 John Hay Beith
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See Ian Hay (8.33)
2.43 Clive Bell
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1881-1964
One account...given me by a very good artist, is that what he tries to
express in a picture is "a passionate apprehension of form."
Art (1914) pt. 1, ch. 3
It would follow that "significant form" was form behind which we catch a
sense of ultimate reality.
Art (1914) pt. 1, ch. 3
Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from
circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is
a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.
Art (1914) pt. 2, ch. 1
I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I
conceive, is the function of the critic.
Art (1914) pt. 3 ch. 3
Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a
recogniton of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we
believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily
good; and that all questions are open.
Civilization (1928) ch. 5
2.44 Henry Bellamann
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"Randy--where--where's the rest of me?" His voice rose to a sharp wail.
King's Row (1940) pt. 5, ch. 1 (also used in the 1941 film of the book,
where the line was spoken by Ronald Reagan)
Child! do not throw this book about;
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) dedication
I call you bad, my little child,
Upon the title page,
Because a manner rude and wild
Is common at your age.
Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) introduction
Who take their manners from the Ape,
Their habits from the Bear,
Indulge in loud unseemly jape,
And never brush their hair.
Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) introduction
Mothers of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.
Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) "The Tiger"
I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten 'em.
Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) "The Hippopotamus"
When people call this beast to mind,
They marvel more and more
At such a little tail behind,
So large a trunk before.
Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) "The Elephant"
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Jim"
The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Henry King"
Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease."
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Henry King"
"Oh, my Friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires..."
With that, the Wretched Child expires.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Henry King"
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Matilda"
It happened that a few Weeks later
Her Aunt was off to the Theatre
To see that Interesting Play
The Second Mrs Tanqueray.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Matilda"
For every time She shouted "Fire!"
They only answered "Little Liar!"
And therefore when her Aunt returned,
Matilda, and the House, were Burned.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Matilda"
In my opinion, Butlers ought
To know their place, and not to play
The Old Retainer night and day.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Lord Lundy"
Sir! you have disappointed us!
We had intended you to be
The next Prime Minister but three:
The stocks were sold; the Press was squared;
The Middle Class was quite prepared.
But as it is!...My language fails!
Go out and govern New South Wales!
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Lord Lundy"
A Trick that everyone abhors
In Little Girls is slamming Doors.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Rebecca"
She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild:
She was an aggravating child.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Rebecca"
The nicest child I ever knew
Was Charles Augustus Fortescue.
He never lost his cap, or tore
His stockings or his pinafore :
In eating Bread he made no Crumbs,
He was extremely fond of sums.
Cautionary Tales (1907) "Charles Augustus Fortescue"
The pleasure politicians take in their limelight pleases me with a sort of
pleasure I get when I see a child's eyes gleam over a new toy.
Conversation with a Cat (1931) ch. 17
Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day.
This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads
every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God
that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.
Speech to voters of South Salford, 1906, in R. Speaight Life of Hilaire
Belloc (1957) ch. 10
I always like to associate with a lot of priests because it makes me
understand anti-clerical things so well.
Letter to E. S. P. Haynes, 9 Nov. 1909, in R. Speaight Life of Hilaire
Belloc (1957) ch. 17
Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.
Modern Traveller (1898) pt. 6
I had an Aunt in Yucatan
Who bought a Python from a man
And kept it for a pet.
She died, because she never knew
These simple little rules and few;--
The Snake is living yet.
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897) "The Python"
The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
Like an unsuccessful literary man.
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897) "The Llama"
The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all.
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897) "The Microbe"
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897) "The Microbe"
Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
More Peers (1911) "Lord Finchley"
Lord Hippo suffered fearful loss
By putting money on a horse
Which he believed, if it were pressed,
Would run far faster than the rest.
More Peers (1911) "Lord Hippo"
Like many of the Upper Class
He liked the Sound of Broken Glass.
New Cautionary Tales (1930) "About John." Cf. Evelyn Waugh 222:19
Birds in their little nests agree
With Chinamen, but not with me.
New Cautionary Tales (1930) "On Food"
It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing
them.
On Everything (1909) "On Song"
Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would
have let the vulgar stuff alone.
On Nothing (1908) "On Tea"
Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.
Short Talks with the Dead (1926) "Heroic Poem upon Wine"
Sally is gone that was so kindly
Sally is gone from Ha'nacker Hill.
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "Ha'nacker Mill"
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees
And the wine that tasted of the tar?
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "Tarantella"
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
"His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "On His Books"
The Devil, having nothing else to do,
Went off to tempt My Lady Poltagrue.
My Lady, tempted by a private whim,
To his extreme annoyance, tempted him.
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "On Lady Poltagrue"
Of this bad world the loveliest and the best
Has smiled and said "Good Night," and gone to rest.
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "On a Dead Hostess"
The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge)
Broke--and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "On a Great Election"
Lady, when your lovely head
Droops to sink among the Dead,
And the quiet places keep
You that so divinely sleep;
Then the dead shall blessЉd be
With a new solemnity,
For such Beauty, so descending,
Pledges them that Death is ending,
Sleep your fill--but when you wake
Dawn shall over Lethe break.
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "On a Sleeping Friend"
I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
Sonnets and Verse (1923) "Fatigued"
Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.
Sonnets and Verse (ed. 2, 1938) "The Pacifist"
I am a sundial, and I make a botch
Of what is done much better by a watch.
Sonnets and Verse (ed. 2, 1938) "On a Sundial"
From the towns all Inns have been driven: from the villages most....Change
your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost
them. But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you
will have lost the last of England.
This and That (1912) "On Inns"
When I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
Verses (1910) "The South Country"
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
Verses (1910) "The South Country"
Of Courtesy, it is much less
Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,
Yet in my Walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.
Verses (1910) "Courtesy"
Balliol made me, Balliol fed me,
Whatever I had she gave me again:
And the best of Balliol loved and led me.
God be with you, Balliol men.
Verses (1910) "To the Balliol Men Still in Africa"
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
Verses (1910) "Dedicatory Ode"
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.
Verses (1910) "Lines to a Don"
Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply billowing gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep--and learning of a sort.
Verses (1910) "Lines to a Don"
A smell of burning fills the startled Air--
The Electrician is no longer there!
Verses (1910) "Newdigate Poem"
I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied:
"Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied.
Verses (1910) "The False Heart"
The Moon on the one hand, the Dawn on the other;
The Moon is my sister, the Dawn is my brother.
The Moon on my Left and the Dawn on my right.
My Brother, good morning: my Sister good night.
Verses and Sonnets (1896) "The Early Morning"
If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.
Herzog (1961) p. 1 (opening sentence)
The idea, anyway, was to ward off trouble. But now the moronic inferno had
caught up with me. My elegant car...was mutilated.
Humboldt's Gift (1975) p. 35
The only real distinction at this dangerous moment in human history and
cosmic development has nothing to do with medals and ribbons. Not to fall
asleep is distinguished. Everything else is mere popcorn.
Humboldt's Gift (1975) p. 283
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in
the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the
eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of
attention in the midst of distraction.
In George Plimpton Writers at Work (1967) 3rd series, p. 190
2.47 Robert Benchley
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1889-1945
I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an
accent now.
After 1903--What? (1938) p. 241
On a summer vacation trip Benchley arrived in Venice and immediately wired
a friend: "streets flooded. please advise."
In R. E. Drennan Algonquin Wits (1968) p. 45
I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
In R. E. Drennan Algonquin Wits (1968) p. 55
My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents and, so far, nobody
has asked me for my solution, is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there
is always the chance that you will fall out.
Chips off the old Benchley (1949) "Safety Second"
I had just dozed off into a stupor when I heard what I thought was myself
talking to myself. I didn't pay much attention to it, as I knew
practically everything I would have to say to myself, and wasn't
particularly interested.
Chips off the old Benchley (1949) "First Pigeon of Spring"
A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so
much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.
Chips off the old Benchley (1949) "How to get things Done"
The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing
a typewriter ribbon.
Chips off the old Benchley (1949) "Learn to Write"
Bob Benchley was one of the few writers I knew who always laughed at other
writers' lines. I always laughed at one of his. When he returned for his
twenty-fifth homecoming at Harvard [in 1937], he stated to underclassmen,
"I feel as I always have, except for an occasional heart attack."
Groucho Marx Grouchophile (1976) p. 204
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
My Ten Years in a Quandary (1936) p. 204
Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
My Ten Years in a Quandary (1936) p. 295
He [Benchley] came out of a night club one evening and, tapping a
uniformed figure on the shoulder, said, "Get me a cab." The uniformed
figure turned around furiously and informed him that he was not a doorman
but a rear admiral. "O.K.," said Benchley, "Get me a battleship."
New Yorker 5 Jan. 1946
The famous office that Benchley and Dorothy Parker shared in the
Metropolitan Opera House...was a cramped triangle stolen from a hallway.
"One square foot less and it would be adulterous," said Benchley.
New Yorker 5 Jan. 1946
In America there are two classes of travel--first class, and with
children.
Pluck and Luck (1925) p. 6
Often Daddy sat up very late working on a case of Scotch.
Pluck and Luck (1925) p. 198
A friend told him that the particular drink he was drinking was slow
poison, and he replied, "So who's in a hurry?"
Nathaniel Benchley Robert Benchley (1955) ch. 1
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but
I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
In Nathaniel Benchley Robert Benchley (1955) ch. 1
The treachery of the intellectuals.
Title of book (1927)
2.49 Stephen Vincent Ben‚t
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1898-1943
We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
Atlantic Monthly Sept. 1935 "Litany for Dictatorships"
I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
Yale Review (1927) vol. 17, p. 63 "American Names"
I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champm‚dy.
I shall not be there, I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.
Yale Review (1927) vol. 17, p. 64 "American Names"
2.50 William Rose Ben‚t
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1886-1950
Blake saw a treefull of angels at Peckham Rye,
And his hands could lay hold on the tiger's terrible heart.
Blake knew how deep is Hell, and Heaven how high,
And could build the universe from one tiny part.
Burglar of Zodiac (1918) "Mad Blake"
2.51 Tony Benn
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1925-
A holy war with atom bombs could end the human family for ever. I say this
as a socialist whose political commitment owes much more to the teachings
of Jesus--without the mysteries within which they are presented--than to
the writings of Marx whose analysis seems to lack an understanding of the
deeper needs of humanity.
Arguments for Democracy (1981) ch. 7
The distortion of the Marxist idea that developed in Russia was as great,
and of the same character, as the distortion of the Christian teaching at
the time of the Inquisition. But it is as wholly wrong to blame Marx for
what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in
his.
In Alan Freeman The Benn Heresy (1982) p. 172
In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the
benefit of much experience. Almost everything has been tried at least
once.
Hansard 13 Mar. 1974, col. 197
Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.
In Anthony Sampson The New Anatomy of Britain (1971) ch. 24
It is arguable that what has really happened has amounted to such a
breakdown in the social contract, upon which parliamentary democracy by
universal suffrage was based, that that contract now needs to be
re-negotiated on a basis that shares power much more widely, before it can
win general assent again.
The New Politics (1970) ch. 4
The British House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired
politicians.
In Observer 4 Feb. 1962
We thought we could put the economy right in five years. We were wrong.
It will probably take ten.
Speech at Bristol, 18 Apr. 1968, in The Times 19 Apr. 1968
2.52 George Bennard
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1873-1958
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.
The Old Rugged Cross (1913 hymn)
2.53 Alan Bennett
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1934-
Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We are all of
us looking for the key. And, I wonder, how many of you here tonight have
wasted years of your lives looking behind the kitchen dressers of this
life for that key. I know I have. Others think they've found the key,
don't they? They roll back the lid of the sardine tin of life, they reveal
the sardines, the riches of life, therein, and they get them out, they
enjoy them. But, you know, there's always a little bit in the corner you
can't get out. I wonder--I wonder, is there a little bit in the corner of
your life? I know there is in mine.
Beyond the Fringe (1961 revue) "Take a Pew," in Roger Wilmut Complete
Beyond the Fringe (1987) p. 104
I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts
already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic
establishment.
Forty Years On (1969) act 1
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people
wouldn't obey the rules.
Getting On (1972) act 1
One of the few lessons I have learned in life is that there is invariably
something odd about women who wear ankle socks.
Old Country (1978) act 1
We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That
unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Old Country (1978) act 2
2.54 Arnold Bennett
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1867-1931
I place it upon record frankly--the Clayhanger trilogy is good....The
scene, for instance, where Darius Clayhanger dies that lingering death
could scarcely be bettered....And why?...Because I took infinite pains
over it. All the time my father was dying, I was at the bedside making
copious notes. You can't just slap these things down. You have to take
trouble.
Overheard conversation with Hugh Walpole circa 1926, in P. G. Wodehouse
and Guy Bolton Bring on the Girls (1954) ch. 15
His opinion of himself, having once risen, remained at "set fair."
The Card (1911) ch. 1
"Ye can call it influenza if ye like," said Mrs Machin. "There was no
influenza in my young days. We called a cold a cold."
The Card (1911) ch. 8
"And yet," demanded Councillor Barlow, "what's he done? Has he ever done
a day's work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?" "He's
identified," said the first speaker, "with the great cause of cheering us
all up."
The Card (1911) ch. 12
My general impression is that Englishmen act better than Frenchmen, and
Frenchwomen better than Englishwomen.
Cupid and Commonsense (1909) preface
Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no
taste, and men without individuality have no taste--at any rate no taste
that they can impose on their publics.
Evening Standard 21 Aug. 1930
"Bah!" she said. "With people like you, love only means one thing." "No,"
he replied. "It means twenty things, but it doesn't mean nineteen."
Journal (1932) 20 Nov. 1904
A test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a
first-rate work, is that you finish it.
Things that have Interested Me (1921) "Finishing Books"
In the meantime alcohol produces a delightful social atmosphere that
nothing else can produce.
Things that have Interested Me (1921) "For and Against Prohibition"
Seventy minutes had passed before Mr Lloyd George arrived at his proper
theme. He spoke for a hundred and seventeen minutes, in which period he
was detected only once in the use of an argument.
Things that have Interested Me (1921) "After the March Offensive."
Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
Indeed, I think it must be more agreeable, must have a more real savour,
than optimism--from the way in which pessimists abandon themselves to it.
Things that have Interested Me (1921) "Slump in Pessimism"
The price of justice is eternal publicity.
Things that have Interested Me (2nd series, 1923) "Secret Trials"
A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or
high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.
The Title (1918) act 1
Examine the Honours List and you can instantly tell how the Government
feels in its inside. When the Honours List is full of rascals,
millionaires, and--er--chumps, you may be quite sure that the Government
is dangerously ill.
The Title (1918) act 1
Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail.
They cannot give their entire attention to it.
The Title (1918) act 1
Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if
they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
The Title (1918) act 2
Literature's always a good card to play for Honours. It makes people
think that Cabinet ministers are educated.
The Title (1918) act 3
2.55 Ada Benson and Fred Fisher
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1942
Your feet's too big,
Don't want you 'cause your feet's too big,
Mad at you 'cause your feet's too big,
Hates you 'cause your feet's too big.
Your Feet's Too Big (1936 song)
2.56 A. C. Benson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1862-1925
I don't like authority, at least I don't like other people's authority.
Excerpts from Letters to M. E. A. (1926) p. 41
Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.
Land of Hope and Glory (1902 song; music by Sir Edward Elgar)
Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.
This is the End (1917) p. 63
2.58 Edmund Clerihew Bentley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1956
When their lordships asked Bacon
How many bribes he had taken
He had at least the grace
To get very red in the face.
Baseless Biography (1939) "Bacon"
The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about Maps,
But Biography is about Chaps.
Biography for Beginners (1905) introd.
Sir Christopher Wren
Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
If anybody calls
Say I am designing St Paul's."
Biography for Beginners (1905) "Sir Christopher Wren"
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered Sodium.
Biography for Beginners (1905) "Sir Humphrey Davy"
John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote "Principles of Political Economy."
Biography for Beginners (1905) "John Stuart Mill"
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
Biography for Beginners (1905) "Clive"
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
Biography for Beginners (1905) "Edward the Confessor"
Chapman & Hall
Swore not at all.
Mr Chapman's yea was yea,
And Mr Hall's nay was nay.
Biography for Beginners (1905) "Chapman & Hall"
George the Third
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
More Biography (1929) "George the Third"
2.59 Eric Bentley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1916-
The theatre of farce is the theatre of the human body but of that body in
a state as far from the natural as the voice of Chaliapin is from my voice
or yours. It is a theatre in which, though the marionettes are men, the
men are supermarionettes. It is the theatre of the surrealist body.
Life of Drama (1964) ch. 7
Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon;
instead of principles, slogans; and, instead of genuine ideas, Bright
Ideas.
New Republic 29 Dec. 1952
2.60 Nikolai Berdyaev
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1948
Utopias are realizable, they are more realizable than what has been
presented as "realist politics" and what has simply been the calculated
rationalism of armchair politicians. Life is moving towards utopias. But
perhaps a new age is opening up before us, in which the intelligentsia and
the cultured classes will dream of ways to avoid utopias and to return to
a non-utopian society, to a less "perfect" a freer society.
Novoe srednevekov'e (New Middle Ages, 1924) p. 122
2.61 Lord Charles Beresford
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1846-1919
On one occasion, when at the eleventh hour he [Beresford] had been
summoned to dine with the then Prince of Wales, he is said to have
telegraphed back: "Very sorry can't come. Lie follows by post." This story
has been told of several other people, but Lord Charles was the real
originator.
Ralph Nevill World of Fashion 1837-1922 (1923) ch. 5. Cf. Marcel Proust
176:5
2.62 Henri Bergson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1941
La fonction essentielle de l'univers, qui est une machine … faire des
dieux.
The essential function of the universe, which is a machine for making
gods.
Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion (The Two Sources of
Morality and Religion, 1932) ch. 4
2.63 Irving Berlin (Israel Baline)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1989
Come on and hear,
Come on and hear,
Alexander's ragtime band,
Come on and hear,
Come on and hear,
It's the best band in the land.
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911 song)
Anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you.
Anything You Can Do (1946 song)
God bless America,
Land that I love,
Stand beside her and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam,
God bless America,
My home sweet home.
God Bless America (1939 song)
Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning,
Oh! how I'd love to remain in bed;
For the hardest blow of all,
Is to hear the bugler call,
You've got to get up, you've got to get up,
You've got to get up this morning!
Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning (1918 song)
A pretty girl is like a melody
That haunts you night and day.
A Pretty Girl is like a Melody (1919 song)
The song is ended (but the melody lingers on).
Title of song (1927)
There's no business like show business.
Title of song (1946)
I'm puttin' on my top hat,
Tyin' up my white tie,
Brushin' off my tails.
Top Hat, White Tie and Tails (1935 song)
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the tree-tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
White Christmas (1942 song)
2.64 Sir Isaiah Berlin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-
There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate
everything to a single central vision...and, on the other side, those who
pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory....The first kind
of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the
second to the foxes.
Hedgehog and Fox (1953) ch. 1
Rousseau was the first militant lowbrow.
Observer 9 Nov. 1952
Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness
or a quiet conscience.
Two Concepts of Liberty (1958) p. 10
2.65 Georges Bernanos
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1948
Le d‚sir de la priЉre est d‚j… une priЉre.
The wish for prayer is a prayer in itself.
Journal d'un cur‚ de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1936) ch. 2
L'enfer, madame, c'est de ne plus aimer.
Hell, madam, is to love no more.
Journal d'un cur‚ de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1936) ch. 2
2.66 Jeffrey Bernard
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
When people say, "You're breaking my heart," they do in fact usually mean
that you're breaking their genitals.
Spectator 31 May 1986
2.67 Eric Berne
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-1970
The sombre picture presented in Parts I and II of this book, in which
human life is mainly a process of filling in time until the arrival of
death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of
business one is going to transact during the long wait, is a commonplace
but not the final answer.
Games People Play (1964) ch. 18
Games people play: the psychology of human relationships.
Title of book (1964)
2.68 Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.
Roll Over, Beethoven (1956 song)
2.70 John Berryman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-1972
Blossomed Sarah, and I
blossom. Is that thing alive? I hear a famisht howl.
Partisan Review (1953) vol. 20, p. 494 "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet"
We must travel in the direction of our fear.
Poems (1942) "A Point of Age"
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
77 Dream Songs (1964) no. 14
And moreover my mother taught me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
77 Dream Songs (1964) no. 14
I seldom go to films. They are too exciting, said the Honourable Possum.
77 Dream Songs (1964) no. 53
2.71 Pierre Berton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1920-
[Definition of a Canadian:] Somebody who knows how to make love in a
canoe.
Toronto Star, Canadian Mag. 22 Dec. 1973
2.72 Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1856-1921
He [Bethmann Hollweg] said that the step taken by His Majesty's Government
was terrible to a degree, just for a word "neutrality"--a word which in
wartime had so often been disregarded--just for a scrap of paper, Great
Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing
better than to be friends with her.
Report by Sir E. Goschen to Sir Edward Grey, in British Documents on
Origins of the War 1898-1914 (1926) vol. 11, p. 351
2.73 Sir John Betjeman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-1984
He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer
As he gazed at the London skies
Through the Nottingham lace of the curtains
Or was it his bees-winged eyes?
He rose, and he put down The Yellow Book.
He staggered--and, terrible-eyed,
He brushed past the palms on the staircase
And was helped to a hansom outside.
Continual Dew (1937) "Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel"
Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Continual Dew (1937) "Slough"
Rime Intrinsica, Fontmell Magna, Sturminster Newton and Melbury Bubb,
Whist upon whist upon whist upon whist drive, in Institute, Legion and
Social Club.
Horny hands that hold the aces which this morning held the plough--
While Tranter Reuben, T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells and Edith Sitwell lie in
Mellstock churchyard now.
Continual Dew (1937) "Dorset"
Spirits of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe
Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky:
In that red house in a red mahogany book-case
The stamp collection waits with mounts long dry.
Continual Dew (1937) "Death of King George V"
And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad,
And Christmas -morning bells say "Come!"
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "Christmas"
In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd,
The strongest legs in Pontefract.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "The Licorice Fields at Pontefract"
In the Garden City Caf‚ with its murals on the wall
Before a talk on "Sex and Civics" I meditated on the Fall.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "Huxley Hall"
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium--rural Middlesex again.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "Middlesex"
There was sun enough for lazing upon beaches,
There was fun enough for far into the night.
But I'm dying now and done for,
What on earth was all the fun for?
For God's sake keep that sunlight out of sight.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "Sun and Fun"
It's awf'lly bad luck on Diana,
Her ponies have swallowed their bits;
She fished down their throats with a spanner
And frightened them all into fits.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "Hunter Trials"
Oh wasn't it naughty of Smudges?
Oh, Mummy, I'm sick with disgust.
She threw me in front of the Judges
And my silly old collarbone's bust.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "Hunter Trials"
Phone for the fish-knives, Norman
As Cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "How to get on in Society"
Milk and then just as it comes dear?
I'm afraid the preserve's full of stones;
Beg pardon, I'm soiling the doileys
With afternoon tea-cakes and scones.
Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954) "How to get on in Society"
Ghastly good taste, or a depressing story of the rise and fall of English
architecture.
Title of book (1933)
Oh! Chintzy, Chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive!
Mount Zion (1931) "Death in Leamington"
The Church's Restoration
In eighteen-eighty-three
Has left for contemplation
Not what there used to be.
Mount Zion (1931) "Hymn"
Sing on, with hymns uproarious,
Ye humble and aloof,
Look up! and oh how glorious
He has restored the roof!
Mount Zion (1931) "Hymn"
Broad of Church and "broad of Mind,"
Broad before and broad behind,
A keen ecclesiologist,
A rather dirty Wykehamist.
Mount Zion (1931) "The Wykehamist"
Oh shall I see the Thames again?
The prow-promoted gems again,
As beefy ATS
Without their hats
Come shooting through the bridge?
And "cheerioh" or "cheeri-bye"
Across the waste of waters die
And low the mists of evening lie
And lightly skims the midge.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Henley-on-Thames"
Rumbling under blackened girders, Midland, bound for Cricklewood,
Puffed its sulphur to the sunset where that Land of Laundries stood.
Rumble under, thunder over, train and tram alternate go.
Shake the floor and smudge the ledger, Charrington, Sells, Dale and Co.,
Nuts and nuggets in the window, trucks along the lines below.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Parliament Hill Fields"
Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament--you against me.
Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won.
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Subaltern's Love-Song"
The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Subaltern's Love-Song"
By roads "not adopted," by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.
Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car-park the dance has begun.
Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Subaltern's Love-Song"
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Subaltern's Love-Song"
Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray
Of prunus and forsythia across the public way,
For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence,
Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.
And a constant sound of flushing runneth from windows where
The toothbrush too is airing in this new North Oxford air.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "May-Day Song for North Oxford"
Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass.
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) "Ireland with Emily"
The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gymn,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along in the old canal
That carries the bricks to Lewley.
Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) "A Shropshire Lad"
Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great big mountainous sports girl,
Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five:
That old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl,
Although he's playing for Woking,
Can't stand up to your wonderful backhand drive.
Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) "Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden"
Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots' and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.
Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) "In Westminster Abbey"
The dread of beatings! Dread of being late!
And, greatest dread of all, the dread of games!
Summoned by Bells (1960) ch. 7
Balkan Sobranies in a wooden box,
The college arms upon the lid; Tokay
And sherry in the cupboard; on the shelves
The University Statutes bound in blue,
Crome Yellow, Prancing Nigger, Blunden, Keats.
Summoned by Bells (1960) ch. 9
As one more solemn of our number said:
"Spiritually I was at Eton, John."
Summoned by Bells (1960) ch. 9
He [Winston Churchill] is a man suffering from petrified adolescence.
In Vincent Brome Aneurin Bevan (1953) ch. 11
Listening to a speech by Chamberlain is like paying a visit to
Woolworth's: everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.
In Michael Foot Aneurin Bevan (1962) vol. 1, ch. 8
I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated
calculating machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by
indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice he must not
allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper
education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and
objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would
about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine.
In Michael Foot Aneurin Bevan (1973) vol. 2, ch. 11
Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of
silver.
In Michael Foot Aneurin Bevan (1973) vol. 2, ch. 13
This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an
organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same
time.
Speech at Blackpool 24 May 1945, in Daily Herald 25 May 1945
I do not think Winston Churchill wants war, but the trouble with him is
that he doesn't even know how to avoid it. He does not talk the language
of the 20th century but that of the 18th. He is still fighting Blenheim
all over again. His only answer to a difficult situation is send a
gun-boat.
Speech at Scarborough 2 Oct. 1951, in Daily Herald 3 Oct. 1951
If you carry this resolution you will send Britain's Foreign Secretary
naked into the conference chamber.
Speech at Brighton, in Daily Herald 4 Oct. 1957
The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the
Right Honourable Gentleman [Neville Chamberlain] for four and a half
years.
Hansard 23 July 1929, col. 1191
Why read the crystal when he can read the book?
Hansard 29 Sept. 1949, col. 319
I am not going to spend any time whatsoever in attacking the Foreign
Secretary. Quite honestly, I am beginning to feel extremely sorry for
him. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the
monkey when the organ grinder is present.
Hansard 16 May 1957, col. 680
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They
get run down.
In Observer 6 Dec. 1953
The language of priorities is the religion of Socialism.
Speech at Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, 8 June 1949, in Report of
48th Annual Conference (1949) p. 172
No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can
eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that
inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they
are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to
semi-starvation.
Speech at Manchester, 4 July 1948, in The Times 5 July 1948
I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
The Times 29 Mar. 1960
2.75 William Henry Beveridge (First Baron Beveridge)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1963
Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their
dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
Full Employment in a Free Society (1944) pt. 7
The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or
of races, but the happiness of the common man.
Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942) pt. 7
The state is or can be master of money, but in a free society it is master
of very little else.
Voluntary Action (1948) ch. 12
2.76 Ernest Bevin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1951
If you open that Pandora's Box [the Council of Europe], you never know
what Trojan 'orses will jump out.
Sir Roderick Barclay Ernest Bevin and Foreign Office (1975) ch. 3
A Ministerial colleague with whom Ernie [Bevin] was almost always on bad
terms was Nye Bevan. There was a well-known occasion when the latter had
incurred Ernie's displeasure, and one of those present, seeking to excuse
Nye, observed that he was sometimes his own worst enemy. "Not while I'm
alive 'e aint!" retorted Ernie.
In Sir Roderick Barclay Ernest Bevin and Foreign Office (1975) ch. 4
There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly
before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented....The common man,
I think, is the great protection against war.
Hansard 23 Nov. 1945, col. 786
The most conservative man in this world is the British Trade Unionist when
you want to change him.
Speech, 8 Sept. 1927, in Report of Proceedings of the Trades Union
Congress (1927) p. 298
I didn't ought never to have done it. It was you, Willie, what put me up
to it.
To Lord Strang, after officially recognizing Communist China, in C.
Parrott Serpent and Nightingale (1977) ch. 3
My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria Station and go
anywhere I damn well please.
In Spectator 20 Apr. 1951, p. 514
2.77 Georges Bidault
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1983
The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
In Observer 15 July 1962
Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but
not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its
object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 12
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 13
Advice, n. The smallest current coin.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 14
Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 16
Ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 17
Applause, n. The echo of a platitude.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 19
Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a
pocket with his tongue.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 24
Battle, n. A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would
not yield to the tongue.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 30
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 37
Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 39
Calamity, n....Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and
good fortune to others.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 41
Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as
distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 56
Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 63
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the
foolish their lack of understanding.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 86
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 86
Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends
are true, and our happiness is assured.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 129
History, n. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which
are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 161
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a
master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
Devil's Dictionary (1911) p. 213
Noise, n. A stench in the ear....The chief product and authenticating sign
of civilization.
Devil's Dictionary (1911) p. 228
Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
Devil's Dictionary (1911) p. 248
Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
Devil's Dictionary (1911) p. 248
Prejudice, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
Devil's Dictionary (1911) p. 264
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Devil's Dictionary (1911) p. 306
Destiny, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool 's excuse for
failure.
Enlarged Devil's Dictionary (1967) p. 64
Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
Horizon Oct. 1942, "The Ruins"
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
The Times 21 Sept. 1914, "For the Fallen"
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
The Times 21 Sept. 1914, "For the Fallen"
My God! They've shot our fox! [said 13 Nov. 1947, when hearing of the
resignation of Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour
Government].
In Harold Macmillan Tides of Fortune (1969) ch. 3
2.81 John Bird
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
That was the week that was.
Title of BBC television series, 1962-3: see Ned Sherrin A Small
Thing--Like an Earthquake (1983) p. 62
2.82 Earl of Birkenhead
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See F. E. Smith (19.82)
2.83 Lord Birkett (William Norman Birkett, Baron Birkett)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1883-1962
I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But
I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are
still going.
In Observer 30 Oct. 1960
2.84 Eric Blair
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
See George Orwell ("George Orwell (Eric Blair)" in topic 15.24
form=pageonly.)
2.89 Edmund Blunden
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1974
Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan,
Use him as though you love him;
Court him, elude him, reel and pass,
And let him hate you through the glass.
Masks of Time (1925) "Midnight Skaters"
I have been young, and now am not too old;
And I have seen the righteous forsaken,
His health, his honour and his quality taken.
This is not what we were formerly told.
Near and Far (1929) "Report on Experience"
This was my country and it may be yet,
But something flew between me and the sun.
Retreat (1928) "The Resignation"
I am for the woods against the world,
But are the woods for me?
To Themis (1931) "The Kiss"
2.90 Alfred Blunt (Bishop of Bradford)
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1879-1957
The benefit of the King's Coronation depends, under God, upon two
elements: First, on the faith, prayer, and self-dedication of the King
himself, and on that it would be improper for me to say anything except to
commend him, and ask you to commend him, to God's grace, which he will so
abundantly need...if he is to do his duty faithfully. We hope that he is
aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his
awareness.
Speech to Bradford Diocesan Conference, 1 Dec. 1936, in The Times 2 Dec.
1936
To the Grafton Gallery to look at...the Post-Impressionist pictures sent
over from Paris....The drawing is on the level of that of an untaught
child of seven or eight years old, the sense of colour that of a tea-tray
painter, the method that of a schoolboy who wipes his fingers on a slate
after spitting on them....These are not works of art at all, unless
throwing a handful of mud against a wall may be called one. They are the
works of idleness and impotent stupidity, a pornographic show.
My Diaries (1920) 15 Nov. 1910
I like the hunting of the hare
Better than that of the fox.
New Pilgrimage (1889) "The Old Squire"
2.92 Ronald Blythe
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1922-
As for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the
bathroom, with the minimum of fuss and with no explanation if he can help
it.
Age of Illusion (1963) ch. 12
An industrial worker would sooner have a њ5 note but a countryman must
have praise.
Akenfield (1969) ch. 5
Five go off in a caravan.
Title of children's story (1946)
The naughtiest girl in the school.
Title of children's story (1940)
2.94 Louise Bogan
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1897-1970
Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.
Body of this Death (1923) "Women"
Contrary to legend, as a juvenile I never said "Tennis, anyone?" just as
I never said "Drop the gun, Louie" as a heavy.
In Ezra Goodman Bogey: the Good-Bad Guy (1965) ch. 4. Cf. George Bernard
Shaw 199:4 See also Julius J. Epstein et al (5.22)
2.96 John B. Bogart
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1848-1921
When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But
if a man bites a dog, that is news.
In F. M. O'Brien Story of the Sun (1918) ch. 10 (the quotation is often
attributed to Charles A. Dana)
One of the favourite maxims of my father was the distinction between the
two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the
opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where
opposites are obviously absurd.
In S. Rozental Niels Bohr (1967) p. 328
2.98 Alan Bold
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1943-
They mattered more than they should have. It is so
In Scotland, land of the omnipotent No.
Perpetual Motion Machine (1969) "A Memory of Death"
2.99 Robert Bolt
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1924-
Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture
learned from books.
A Man for All Seasons (1960) act 2
2.100 Andrew Bonar Law
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1858-1923
If, therefore, war should ever come between these two countries [Great
Britain and Germany], which Heaven forbid! it will not, I think, be due to
irresistible natural laws; it will be due to the want of human wisdom.
Hansard 27 Nov. 1911, col. 167
If I am a great man, then all great men are frauds.
In Lord Beaverbrook Politicians and the War (1932) vol. 2, ch. 4
2.101 Carrie Jacobs Bond
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1862-1946
When you come to the end of a perfect day,
And you sit alone with your thought,
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay
For the joy that the day has brought,
Do you think what the end of a perfect day
Can mean to a tired heart,
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
And the dear friends have to part?
Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey, too;
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
With a wish that is kind and true.
For mem'ry has painted this perfect day
With colours that never fade,
And we find, at the end of a perfect day,
The soul of a friend we've made.
A Perfect Day (1910 song)
2.102 Sir David Bone
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1874-1959
It's "Damn you, Jack--I'm all right!" with you chaps.
Brassbounder (1910) ch. 3
2.103 Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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1906-1945
Es ist der Vorzug und das Wesen der Starken, dass sie die grossen
Entscheidungsfragen stellen und zu ihnen klar Stellung nehmen k”nnen. Die
Schwachen mЃssen sich immer zwischen Alternativen entscheiden, die nicht
die ihren sind.
It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring
out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak
always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.
Widerstand und Ergebung (Resistance and Submission, 1951) "Ein paat
Gedanken Ѓber Verschiedenes"
Jesus nur "fЃr andere da ist."...Gott in Menschengestalt!...nicht die
griechische Gott-Menschgestalt des "Menschen an sich," sondern "der Mensch
fЃr andere," darum der Gekreuzigte.
Jesus is there only for others....God in human form! not...in the Greek
divine-human form of "man in himself," but "the man for others," and
therefore the crucified.
Widerstand und Ergebung (Resistance and Submission, 1951) "Entwurf einer
Arbeit"
2.105 Daniel J. Boorstin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
The Image (1961) ch. 2
A bestseller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was
selling well.
The Image (1961) ch. 4
2.106 James H. Boren
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1925-
Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in
trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.
In New York Times 8 Nov. 1970, p. 45
2.107 Jorge Luis Borges
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1899-1986
El original es infiel a la traducciўn.
The original is unfaithful to the translation [Henley's translation of
Beckford's Vathek].
Sobre el "Vathek"de William Beckford (1943) in Obras Completas (1974)
p. 730
Para uno de esos gnўsticos, el visible universo era una ilusiўn ў (mas
precisamente) un sofisma. Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables
porque lo multiplican y lo divulgan.
For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more
precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they
multiply it and extend it.
Tl”n, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius (1941) in Obras Completas (1974) p. 431
The Falklands thing [the Falklands War of 1982] was a fight between two
bald men over a comb.
In Time 14 Feb. 1983
2.108 Max Born
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1882-1970
The human race has today the means for annihilating itself--either in
a fit of complete lunacy, i.e., in a big war, by a brief fit of
destruction, or by careless handling of atomic technology, through a slow
process of poisoning and of deterioration in its genetic structure.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (1957) vol. 13, p. 186
2.109 John Collins Bossidy
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1860-1928
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots
And the Cabots talk only to God.
Verse spoken at Holy Cross College alumni dinner in Boston, Mass., 1910,
in Springfield Sunday Republican 14 Dec. 1924
2.110 Gordon Bottomley
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1874-1948
When you destroy a blade of grass
You poison England at her roots:
Remember no man's foot can pass
Where evermore no green life shoots.
Chambers of Imagery (1912) "To Ironfounders and Others"
Your worship is your furnaces,
Which, like old idols, lost obscenes,
Have molten bowels; your vision is
Machines for making more machines.
Chambers of Imagery (1912) "To Ironfounders and Others"
During his incarceration at the Scrubbs [1922-3], Bottomley was largely
employed in the making of mail-bags. It was while he was so engaged one
afternoon that a prison visitor...saw him busily stitching away. "Ah,
Bottomley," he remarked brightly, "sewing? " "No," grunted the old man
without looking up, "reaping."
In S.T. Felstead Horatio Bottomley (1936) ch. 16
Gentlemen: I have not had your advantages. What poor education I have
received has been gained in the University of Life.
Speech at Oxford Union, 2 Dec. 1920, in Beverley Nichols 25 (1926) ch. 7
2.112 Sir Harold Edwin Boulton
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1859-1935
When Adam and Eve were dispossessed
Of the garden hard by Heaven,
They planted another one down in the west,
'Twas Devon, glorious Devon!
Lyrics and other Poems (1902) "Glorious Devon"
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
"Onward," the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be king,
Over the sea to Skye.
National Songs and Some Ballads (1908) "Skye Boat Song"
2.113 Elizabeth Bowen
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1899-1973
Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself--in fact,
till it does that, it hardly is experience.
Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 1, ch. 1
In fact, it is about five o'clock in an evening that the first hour of
spring strikes--autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the
close of a winter day.
Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 2, ch. 1
Some people are moulded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.
Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 2, ch. 2
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots
people out. We have really no absent friends.
Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 2, ch. 2
Elizabeth Bowen said that she [Edith Sitwell] looked like "a high altar on
the move."
V. Glendinning Edith Sitwell (1981) ch. 25
I suppose art is the only thing that can go on mattering once it has
stopped hurting.
Heat of the Day (1949) ch. 16
There is no end to the violations committed by children on children,
quietly talking alone.
House in Paris (1935) pt. 1, ch. 2
Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.
House in Paris (1935) pt. 1, ch. 5
Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as
they were projected.
House in Paris (1935) pt. 2, ch. 1
Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
House in Paris (1935) pt. 2, ch. 2
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
House in Paris (1935) pt. 2, ch. 8
My failing to have a nice ear for vowel sounds, and the Anglo-Irish
slurred, hurried way of speaking made me take the words "Ireland" and
"island" to be synonymous. Thus, all other countries quite surrounded by
water took (it appeared) their generic name from ours.
Seven Winters (1942) p. 12
2.114 David Bowie (David Jones)
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1947-
Ground control to Major Tom.
Space Oddity (1969 song)
2.115 Sir Maurice Bowra
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1971
There is also that story, perhaps apocryphal, of Maurice [Bowra]'s
decision to get married. When he announced that he had at last chosen
a girl, a friend remonstrated: "But you can't marry anyone as plain as
that." Maurice answered: "My dear fellow, buggers can't be choosers."
Francis King in Hugh Lloyd-Jones Maurice Bowra: a Celebration (1974)
p. 150
I'm a man more dined against than dining.
In John Betjeman Summoned by Bells (1960) ch. 9
2.116 Charles Boyer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1978
Come with me to the Casbah.
Catch-phrase often attributed to Boyer, but L. Swindell Charles Boyer
(1983) ch. 7 says: Algiers...is the picture in which Charles Boyer did not
say "Come wiz me to zee Casbah" to Hedy Lamarr....Boyer and Lamarr were in
the Casbah in most of their Algiers scenes, and they did have an important
scene in which they were not in the Casbah, but the dialogue was nowhere
close.
2.117 Lord Brabazon (Baron Brabazon of Tara)
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1884-1964
I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are
going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about
it.
Hansard (Lords) 21 June 1955, col. 207
2.118 Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman Jr.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Charles Brackett 1892-1969
Billy Wilder 1906-
JOE GILLIS: You used to be in pictures. You used to be big.
NORMA DESMOND: I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
Sunset Boulevard (1950 film)
All right, Mr de Mille, I'm ready for my close-up now.
Sunset Boulevard (1950 film)
2.119 Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Charles Brackett 1892-1969
Billy Wilder 1906-
Walter Reisch 1903-1983
Iranoff: What a charming idea for Moscow to surprise us with a lady
Comrade.
Kopalski: If we had known we would have greeted you with flowers.
Iranoff: Ahh--yes.
Ninotchka: Don't make an issue of my womanhood.
Ninotchka (1939 film)
Ninotchka: Why should you carry other people's bags?
Porter: Well, that's my business, Madame.
Ninotchka: That's no business. That's social injustice.
Porter: That depends on the tip.
Ninotchka (1939 film)
2.120 F. H. Bradley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1846-1924
The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper thoughts
about their neighbours.
Aphorisms (1930) no. 9
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would
be willing to repeat.
Aphorisms (1930) no. 10
The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not
happiness.
Aphorisms (1930) no. 33
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon
instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
Appearance and Reality (1893) preface
Of Optimism I have said that "The world is the best of all possible
worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil."
Appearance and Reality (1893) preface
That the glory of this world...is appearance leaves the world more
glorious, if we feel it is a show of some fuller splendour; but the
sensuous curtain is a deception...if it hides some colourless movement of
atoms, some...unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.
Principles of Logic (1883) bk. 3, pt. 2, ch. 4
The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.
Speech to Boston Chamber of Commerce, 10 Nov. 1948, in Collected Writings
(1967) vol. 1, p. 588
We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the
Mount.
Speech to Boston Chamber of Commerce, 10 Nov. 1948, in Collected Writings
(1967) vol. 1, p. 588
Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world.
Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would
involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and
with the wrong enemy.
US Cong. Senate Comm. on Armed Services (1951) vol. 2, p. 732
2.122 Caryl Brahms (Doris Caroline Abrahams) and S. J. Simon (Simon Jasha Skidelsky)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Caryl Brahms 1901-1982
The suffragettes were triumphant. Woman's place was in the gaol.
No Nightingales (1944) pt. 6, ch. 37
2.123 John Braine
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1922-
Room at the top.
Title of novel (1957). Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 566:9
2.124 Ernest Bramah (Ernest Bramah Smith)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1942
It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for
the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.
Wallet of Kai Lung (1900) p. 6
In his countenance this person read an expression of no-encouragement
towards his venture.
Wallet of Kai Lung (1900) p. 224
The whole narrative is permeated with the odour of joss-sticks and
honourable high-mindedness.
Wallet of Kai Lung (1900) p. 330
2.125 Georges Braque
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1963
L'Art est fait pour troubler, la Science rassure.
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.
Le Jour et la nuit: Cahiers 1917-52 (Day and Night, Notebooks, 1952)
p. 11
La v‚rit‚ existe; on n'invente que le mensonge.
Truth exists; only lies are invented.
Le Jour et la nuit: Cahiers 1917-52 (Day and Night, Notebooks, 1952)
p. 20
2.126 John Bratby
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
A real art student wears coloured socks, has a fringe and a beard, wears
dirty jeans and an equally dirty seaman's pullover, carries a sketch-book,
is despised by the rest of society, and loafs in a coffee bar.
Breakdown (1960) ch. 8
Und der Haifisch, der hat Z„hne
Und die tr„gt er im Gesicht
Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
Doch das Messer sieht man nicht.
Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear,
And he shows them pearly white.
Just a jack-knife has Macheath, dear
And he keeps it out of sight.
Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera, 1928) prologue
Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.
Food comes first, then morals.
Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera, 1928) act 2, sc. 3
Was ist ein Einbruch in eine Bank gegen die GrЃndung einer Bank?
What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?
Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera, 1928) act 3, sc. 3
Andrea: UnglЃcklich das Land, das keine Helden hat!...
Galilei: Nein. UnglЃcklich das Land, das Helden n”tig hat.
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes!...
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.
Leben des Galilei (Life of Galileo, 1939) sc. 13
Man merkts, hier ist zu lang kein Krieg gewesen. Wo soll da Moral
herkommen, frag ich? Frieden, das ist nur Schlamperei, erst der Krieg
schafft Ordnung.
One observes, they have gone too long without a war here. What is the
moral, I ask? Peace is nothing but slovenliness, only war creates order.
Mutter Courage (Mother Courage, 1939) sc. 1
Weil ich ihm nicht trau, wir sind befreundet.
Because I don't trust him, we are friends.
Mutter Courage (Mother Courage, 1939) sc. 3
Die sch”nsten Pl„n sind schon zuschanden geworden durch die Kleinlichheit
von denen, wo sie ausfЃhren sollten, denn die Kaiser selber k”nnen ja nix
machen.
The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to
carry them out, for the Emperor himself can actually do nothing.
Mutter Courage (Mother Courage, 1939) sc. 6
Der Krieg findet immer einen Ausweg.
War always finds a way.
Mutter Courage (Mother Courage, 1939) sc. 6
Sagen Sie mir nicht, dass Friede ausgebrochen ist, wo ich eben neue
Vorr„te eingekauft hab.
Don't tell me peace has broken out, when I've just bought some new
supplies.
Mutter Courage (Mother Courage, 1939) sc. 8
Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world
is love. The poor know that it is money.
Thoughts in a Dry Season (1978) p. 22
Religions are kept alive by heresies, which are really sudden explosions
of faith. Dead religions do not produce them.
Thoughts in a Dry Season (1978) p. 45
Les hautes parties contractantes d‚clarent solennellement...qu'elles
condamnent le recours … la guerre...et y renoncent en tant qu'instrument
de politique nationale dans leurs relations mutuelles...le rЉglement ou la
solution de tous les diff‚rends ou conflits--de quelque nature ou de
quelque origine qu'ils puissent €tre--qui pourront surgir entre elles ne
devra jamais €tre cherch‚ que par des moyens pacifiques.
The high contracting powers solemnly declare. that they condemn recourse
to war and renounce it...as an instrument of their national policy towards
each other....The settlement or the solution of all disputes or conflicts
of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be which may
arise...shall never be sought by either side except by pacific means.
Draft, 20 June 1927, which became part of the Kellogg Pact, 1928 , in Le
Temps 13 Apr. 1928
2.131 Vera Brittain
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1970
Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.
Rebel Passion (1964) ch. 1
2.132 David Broder
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years
organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
Washington Post 18 July 1973, p. A 25
2.133 Jacob Bronowski
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1974
We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by
contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye....The hand is the
cutting edge of the mind.
Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 3
That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are
on the way to a pertinent answer.
Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 4
The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole
through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.
Face of Violence (1954) ch. 5
The world is made of people who never quite get into the first team and
who just miss the prizes at the flower show.
Face of Violence (1954) ch. 6
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science
has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to
cast on nature.
Universities Quarterly (1956) vol. 10, no. 3, p. 252
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
Cambridge Review 8 Dec. 1910, "Sonnet"
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes.
New Numbers no. 3 (1914) "The Great Lover"
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
New Numbers no. 4 (1914) "Peace"
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour;
Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
New Numbers no. 4 (1914) "Safety"
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those that would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
New Numbers no. 4 (1914) "The Dead"
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
New Numbers no. 4 (1914) "The Dead"
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
New Numbers no. 4 (1914) "The Soldier"
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "Heaven"
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "Heaven"
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "Heaven"
But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,
And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own.
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "There's Wisdom in Women"
Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room.
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where das Betreten's not verboten.
...would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"
And in that garden, black and white,
Creep whispers through the grass all night;
And spectral dance, before the dawn,
A hundred Vicars down the lawn;
Curates, long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;
And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean.
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"
God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile.
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I'm told).
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?...oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
1914 and Other Poems (1915) "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester"
Free speech is about as good a cause as the world has ever known. But,
like the poor, it is always with us and gets shoved aside in favour of
things which seem at some given moment more vital....Everybody favours
free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.
New York World 23 Oct. 1926, p. 13
Just as every conviction begins as a whim so does every emancipator serve
his apprenticeship as a crank. A fanatic is a great leader who is just
entering the room.
New York World 6 Feb. 1928, p. 11
Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they contend
successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them.
Accordingly, they don't have to sew buttons.
Seeing Things at Night (1921) "Holding a Baby"
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.
Sitting on the World (1924) "The Last Review"
2.138 H. Rap Brown
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1943-
I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
Speech at Washington, 27 July 1967, in Washington Post 28 July 1967, p. A7
2.139 Helen Gurley Brown
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1922-
Sex and the single girl.
Title of book (1962)
2.140 Ivor Brown
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1974
For nearly a century after his death, Shakespeare remained more a theme
for criticism by the few than a subject of adulation by the many.
Shakespeare (1949) ch. 1
2.141 John Mason Brown
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1969
Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra--and sank.
New York Post 11 Nov. 1937, p. 18
2.142 Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1958
Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Title of song (1931; music by Ray Henderson)
2.143 Nacio Herb Brown
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
But not so odd
As those who choose
A Jewish God,
But spurn the Jews.
Reply to verse by William Norman Ewer: see 78:4
2.145 Sir Frederick Browning
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1965
I think we might be going a bridge too far.
Expressing reservations about the Arnhem "Market Garden" operation to
Field Marshal Montgomery on 10 Sept. 1944, in R. E. Urquhart Arnhem
(1958) p. 4
2.146 Lenny Bruce (Leonard Alfred Schneider)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1925-1966
The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand
them.
In John Cohen Essential Lenny Bruce (1970) p. 59
If homosexuality were the normal way, God would have made Adam and Bruce.
In New York Times 5 June 1977, p. 22
2.148 Martin Buber
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1965
Der Mensch wird am Du zum Ich.
Through the Thou a person becomes I.
Ich und Du (I and Thou, 1923) in Werke (1962) vol. 1, p. 97
2.149 John Buchan (Baron Tweedsmuir)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1940
To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
Memory Hold-the-Door (1940) ch. 2
"Back to Glasgow to do some work for the cause," I said lightly. "Just
so," he said, with a grin. "It's a great life if you don't weaken."
Mr Standfast (1919) ch. 5
An atheist is man who has no invisible means of support.
In H. E. Fosdick On Being a Real Person (1943) ch. 10
2.150 Frank Buchman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1961
I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of
defence against the anti-Christ of Communism.
New York World-Telegram 26 Aug. 1936
Suppose everybody cared enough, everybody shared enough, wouldn't
everybody have enough? There is enough in the world for everyone's need,
but not enough for everyone's greed.
Remaking the World (1947) p. 56
2.151 Gene Buck (Edward Eugene Buck) and Herman Ruby
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Gene Buck 1885-1957
Herman Ruby 1891-1959
That Shakespearian rag,--
Most intelligent, very elegant.
That Shakespearian Rag (1912 song; music by David Stamper). Cf. T. S.
Eliot 76:21
2.152 Richard Buckle
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1916-
John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison are the greatest composers
since Beethoven, with Paul McCartney way out in front.
Sunday Times 29 Dec. 1963
2.153 Arthur Buller
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1874-1944
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
Punch 19 Dec. 1923, "Relativity"
If he [Harold Wilson] ever went to school without any boots it was because
he was too big for them.
Speech at Conservative Party Conference, in Manchester Guardian 13 Oct.
1949
2.155 Luis Bu¤uel
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1983
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie.
The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.
Title of film (1972)
Grѓce … Dieu, je suis toujours ath‚e.
Thanks to God, I am still an atheist.
In Le Monde 16 Dec. 1959
2.156 Anthony Burgess
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-
Who ever heard of a clockwork orange? Then I read a malenky bit out loud
in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: "The attempt to impose upon
man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the
last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and
conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my
sword-pen."
A Clockwork Orange (1962) p. 21
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my
catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Earthly Powers (1980) p. 7
He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his
child.
Inside Mr Enderby (1963) pt. 1, ch. 4
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
New York Times Book Review 4 Dec. 1966, p. 74
2.157 Johnny Burke
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1964
Every time it rains, it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven?
You'll find your fortune falling
All over town
Be sure that your umbrella
Is upside down.
Pennies from Heaven (1936 song; music by Arthur Johnston)
Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Morocco bound.
The Road to Morocco (1942 song from film The Road to Morocco; music by
James van Heusen)
2.158 John Burns
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1858-1943
"What have you in the Mississippi?" he [John Burns] asked an American who
had spoken disparagingly of the Thames. The American replied that there
was water--miles and miles of it. "Ah, but you see, the Thames is liquid
history," said Burns.
Daily Mail 25 Jan. 1943
2.159 William S. Burroughs
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-
I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little
tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through
human consciousness control events.
Paris Review Fall 1965
2.160 Benjamin Hapgood Burt
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1880-1950
One evening in October, when I was one-third sober,
An' taking home a "load" with manly pride;
My poor feet began to stutter, so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up an' lay down by my side;
Then we sang "It's all fair weather when good fellows get together,"
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
"You can tell a man who 'boozes' by the company he chooses"
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
The Pig Got Up and Slowly Walked Away (1933 song)
There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
White Cliffs of Dover (1941 song; music by Walter Kent)
2.162 R. A. Butler (Baron Butler of Saffron Walden)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1982
Politics is the Art of the Possible. That is what these pages show I have
tried to achieve--not more--and that is what I have called my book.
The Art of the Possible (1971) p. xi. Cf. Bismarck's "Die Politik ist die
Lehre vom M”glichen," Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 84:20
Reporter: Mr Butler, would you say that this [Anthony Eden] is the best
Prime Minister we have?
R. A. Butler: Yes.
Interview at London Airport, 8 Jan. 1956, in R. A. Butler The Art of the
Possible (1971) ch. 9
2.163 Ralph Butler and Noel Gay (Richard Moxon Armitage)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1954
The sun has got his hat on
Hip hip hip hooray!
The sun has got his hat on
And he's coming out today.
The Sun Has Got His Hat On (1932 song)
2.164 Samuel Butler
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1835-1902
Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again
Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.
Athenaeum 4 Jan. 1902,
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want
of money is so quite as truly.
Erewhon (1872) ch. 20
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it
is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He
tolerates their existence.
Erewhon Revisited (1901) ch. 14
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument
as one goes on.
Speech at the Somerville Club, 27 Feb. 1895, in R. A. Streatfield Essays
on Life, Art and Science (1904) p. 69
An honest God's the noblest work of man.
Further Extracts from Notebooks (1934) p. 26. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (1979) 270:17 and 379:24
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his own property at the
resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Further Extracts from Notebooks (1934) p. 27
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts,
his money, and his religious opinions.
Further Extracts from Notebooks (1934) p. 93
The course of true anything never does run smooth.
Further Extracts from Notebooks (1934) p. 260
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those
who do not wish to hear it.
Further Extracts from Notebooks (1934) p. 279
I heard a man say that brigands demand your money or your life, whereas
women require both.
Further Extracts from Notebooks (1934) p. 315
It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another
and so make only two people miserable instead of four, besides being very
amusing.
Letters between Samuel Butler and Miss E. M. A. Savage 1871-1885 (1935)
21 Nov. 1884
The most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious.
Life and Habit (1877) ch. 2
It has, I believe, been often remarked that a hen is only an egg's way of
making another egg.
Life and Habit (1877) ch. 8
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 1
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient
premises.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 1
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every
organism to live beyond its income.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 1
The healthy stomach is nothing if not conservative. Few radicals have good
digestions.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 6
Always eat grapes downwards--that is, always eat the best grape first; in
this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will
seem good down to the last. If you eat the other way, you will not have
a good grape in the lot. Besides you will be tempting providence to kill
you before you come to the best.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 7
How thankful we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a
musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And
fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues!
Notebooks (1912) ch. 8
The history of art is the history of revivals.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 8
Genius...has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble....It
might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its
possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as
the genius remains.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 11
An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard
one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 14
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with
him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself
too.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 14
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 14
To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy
instinct for it.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 14
The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on
the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is,
but the milk is more likely to be watered.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 17
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Notebooks (1912) ch. 19
Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room
The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall;
Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed, and set at naught,
Beauty crieth in an attic, and no man regardeth.
O God! O Montreal!
Spectator 18 May 1878, "Psalm of Montreal"
I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any literary
man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep my books at the
British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very angry if any one gives
me one for my private library.
Universal Review Dec. 1890, "Ramblings in Cheapside"
Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with
equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single
lifetime.
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 5
They would have been equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion
doubted, and at seeing it practised.
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 15
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to
enjoy it--and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will
allow.
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 19
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it
on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 34
Young as he was, his instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes
the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 39
Beyond a haricot vein in one of my legs, I'm as young as ever I was. Old
indeed! There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle!
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 61
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Way of All Flesh (1903) ch. 67. Cf. Tennyson in Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (1979) 536:16
2.165 Max Bygraves
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1922-
See Eric Sykes and Max Bygraves (19.137)
2.166 James Branch Cabell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1958
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds;
and the pessimist fears this is true.
Silver Stallion (1926) bk. 4, ch. 26
3.0 C
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
3.1 Irving Caesar
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-
Picture you upon my knee,
Just tea for two and two for tea.
Tea for Two (1925 song; music by Vincent Youmans)
3.2 John Cage
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-
I have nothing to say
and I am saying it and that is
poetry.
Silence (1961) "Lecture on nothing"
3.3 James Cagney
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1986
Frank Gorshin--oh, Frankie, just in passing: I never said [in any film]
"Mmm, you dirty rat!" What I actually did say was "Judy! Judy! Judy!"
Speech at American Film Institute banquet, 13 Mar. 1974, in Cagney by
Cagney (1976) ch. 14
Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage,
This I tell ya, brother,
Ya can't have one without the other.
Love and Marriage (1955 song; music by James Van Heusen)
It's that second time you hear your love song sung,
Makes you think perhaps, that
Love like youth is wasted on the young.
The Second Time Around (1960 song; music by James Van Heusen)
3.5 James M. Cain
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1977
The postman always rings twice.
Title of novel (1934) and play (1936)
3.6 Michael Caine (Maurice Joseph Micklewhite)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1933-
Not many people know that.
Title of book (1984)
3.7 Sir Joseph Cairns
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1920-
The betrayal of Ulster, the cynical and entirely undemocratic banishment
of its properly elected Parliament and a relegation to the status of
a fuzzy wuzzy colony is, I hope, a last betrayal contemplated by Downing
Street because it is the last that Ulster will countenance.
Speech on retiring as Lord Mayor of Belfast, 31 May 1972, in Daily
Telegraph 1 June 1972
3.8 Charles Calhoun
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1897-1972
Shake, rattle and roll.
Title of song (1954)
3.9 James Callaghan (Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-
We say that what Britain needs is a new social contract. That is what
this document [Labour's Programme for Britain] is about.
Speech at Labour Party Annual Conference, 2 Oct. 1972, in Conference
Report (1972) p. 115
A lie can be half-way around the world before truth has got his boots on.
Hansard 1 Nov. 1976, col. 976
I don't think other people in the world would share the view there is
mounting chaos.
In interview at London Airport, 10 Jan. 1979, in The Sun 11 Jan. 1979; the
Sun headlined its report:"Crisis? What Crisis?"
3.10 Joseph Campbell (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1944
As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an ag‚d face.
Irishry (1913) "Old Woman"
3.11 Mrs Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Campbell)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1940
Oh dear me--its too late to do anything but accept you and love you--but
when you were quite a little boy somebody ought to have said "hush" just
once!
Letter to G. B. Shaw, 1 Nov. 1912, cited in Alan Dent Bernard Shaw and Mrs
Patrick Campbell (1952) p. 52
A popular anecdote describes a well known actor-manager [Sir Herbert
Beerbohm Tree] as saying one day at rehearsal to an actress of
distinguished beauty [Mrs Patrick Campbell], "Let us give Shaw a beefsteak
and put some red blood into him." "For heaven's sake, don't," she
exclaimed: "he is bad enough as it is; but if you give him meat no woman
in London will be safe."
G. B. Shaw in Frank Harris Contemporary Portraits (1919) p. 331
It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in
the street and frighten the horses.
In Daphne Fielding Duchess of Jermyn Street (1964) ch. 2
Tallulah [Bankhead] is always skating on thin ice. Everyone wants to be
there when it breaks.
In The Times 13 Dec. 1968
It was Mrs Campbell, for instance, who, on a celebrated occasion, threw
her companion into a flurry by describing her recent marriage as "the
deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the
chaise-longue."
Alexander Woollcott While Rome Burns (1934) "The First Mrs Tanqueray"
3.12 Roy Campbell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1901-1957
Of all the clever people round me here
I most delight in Me--
Mine is the only voice I care to hear,
And mine the only face I like to see.
Adamastor (1930) "Home Thoughts in Bloomsbury"
You praise the firm restraint with which they write--
I'm with you there, of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where's the bloody horse?
Adamastor (1930) "On Some South African Novelists"
I hate "Humanity" and all such abstracts: but I love people. Lovers of
"Humanity" generally hate people and children, and keep parrots or puppy
dogs.
Light on a Dark Horse (1951) ch. 13
Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the
least attractive.
Poetry Review June-July 1949
Giraffes!--a People
Who live between the earth and skies,
Each in his lone religious steeple,
Keeping a light-house with his eyes.
Talking Bronco (1946) "Dreaming Spires"
South Africa, renowned both far and wide
For politics and little else beside.
The Wayzgoose (1928) p. 7
3.13 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1836-1908
There is a phrase which seems in itself somewhat self-evident, which is
often used to account for a good deal--that "war is war." But when you
come to ask about it, then you are told that the war now going on is not
war. [Laughter] When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods
of barbarism in South Africa.
Speech to National Reform Union, 14 June 1901, in Daily News 15 June 1901
Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people
themselves.
Speech at Stirling, 23 Nov. 1905, in Daily News 24 Nov. 1905
3.14 Albert Camus
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1913-1960
Intellectuel = celui qui se d‚double.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Carnets, 1935-42 (Notebooks, 1962) p. 41
La politique et le sort des hommes sont form‚s par des hommes sans id‚alet
sans grandeur. Ceux qui ont une grandeur en eux ne font pas de politique.
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and
without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for
politics.
Carnets, 1935-42 (Notebooks, 1962) p. 99
Vous savez ce qu'est le charme: une maniЉre de s'entendre r‚pondre oui
sans avoir pos‚ aucune question claire.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having
asked any clear question.
La Chute (The Fall, 1956) p. 62
Nous sommes tous des cas exceptionnels. Nous voulons tous faire appel de
quelque chose! Chacun exige d'€tre innocent, … tout prix, m€me si, pour
cela, il faut accuser le genre humain et le ciel.
We are all special cases. We all want to appeal to something! Everyone
insists on his innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest
of the human race and heaven.
La Chute (The Fall, 1956) p. 95
C'est si vrai que nous nous confions rarement … ceux qui sont meilleurs
que nous.
It is very true that we seldom confide in those who are better than
ourselves.
La Chute (The Fall, 1956) p. 97
Je vais vous dire un grand secret, mon cher. N'attendez pas le jugement
dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
I'll tell you a great secret, my friend. Don't wait for the last
judgement. It happens every day.
La Chute (The Fall, 1956) p. 129
Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-€tre hier, je ne sais pas.
Mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I don't know.
L'ђtranger (The Outsider, 1944) p. 9
Qu'est-ce qu'un homme r‚volt‚? Un homme qui dit non.
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
L'Homme r‚volt‚ (The Rebel, 1951) p. 25
Toutes les r‚volutions modernes ont abouti … un renforcement de l' ђtat.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the State.
L'Homme r‚volt‚ (The Rebel, 1951) p. 221
Tout r‚volutionnaire finit en oppresseur ou en h‚r‚tique.
Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.
L'Homme r‚volt‚ (The Rebel, 1951) p. 306
La lutte elle-m€me vers les sommets suffit … remplir un c”urd'homme. Il
faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart.
One must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.
Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942) p. 168
3.15 Elias Canetti
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-
Alles was man vergessen hat, schreit im Traum um Hilfe.
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Die Provinz der Menschen (The Human Province, 1973) p. 269
Won't you come home Bill Bailey, won't you come home?
Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home (1902 song)
3.17 John R. Caples
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-
They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play!
Advertisement for US School of Music, in Physical Culture Dec. 1925, p. 95
3.18 Al Capone
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1947
Don't you get the idea I'm one of these goddam radicals. Don't get the
idea I'm knocking the American system.
Interview, circa 1929, in Claud Cockburn In Time of Trouble (1956) ch. 16
Once in the racket you're always in it.
Philadelphia Public Ledger 18 May 1929
Mr Capote...commented on the difficulty he had reading the Beat novels.
He had tried but he had been unable to finish any one of them...."None of
these people have anything interesting to say," he observed, "and none of
them can write, not even Mr Kerouac." What they do, he added, "isn't
writing at all--it's typing."
Report of television discussion, in New Republic 9 Feb. 1959
Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
In Observer 26 Nov. 1961
Other voices, other rooms.
Title of novel (1948)
3.20 Al Capp
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-1979
[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to
the utterly bewildered.
In National Observer 1 July 1963
Oh, Kathaleen NЎ Houlihan, your road's a thorny way,
And 'tis a faithful soul would walk the flints with you for aye,
Would walk the sharp and cruel flints until his locks grew grey.
Four Winds Of Eirinn (1902) "Passing of the Gael"
3.22 Hoagy Carmichael (Hoagland Howard Carmichael)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1981
See Stuart Gorrell (7.46)
3.23 Stokely Carmichael and Charles Vernon Hamilton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Stokely Carmichael 1941-
Charles Vernon Hamilton 1929-
The adoption of the concept of Black Power is one of the most legitimate
and healthy developments in American politics and race relations in our
time....It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to
recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for
black people to begin to define their own goals, to lead their own
organizations and to support those organizations. It is a call to reject
the racist institutions and values of this society.
Black Power (1967) ch. 2
How to win friends and influence people.
Title of book (1936)
3.25 J. L. Carr
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I've never been spoken to like this before in all my thirty years'
experience," she wails. "You have not had thirty years' experience, Mrs
Grindle-Jones," he says witheringly. "You have had one year's experience
30 times."
Harpole Report (1972) p. 128
3.26 Edward Carson (Baron Carson)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1854-1935
My only great qualification for being put at the head of the Navy is that
I am very much at sea.
In Ian Colvin Life of Lord Carson (1936) vol. 3, ch. 23
3.27 Jimmy Carter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1924-
We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.
Speech to Bible class at Plains, Georgia, March 1976, in Boston Sunday
Herald Advertiser 11 Apr. 1976
I'm Jimmy Carter, and I'm going to be your next president.
Said to the son of a campaign supporter, Nov. 1975, in I'll Never Lie to
You (1976) ch. 1
I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my
heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do--and
I have done it--and God forgives me for it.
Playboy Nov. 1976
3.28 Sydney Carter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1915-
I danced in the morning
When the world was begun
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth--
At Bethlehem I had my birth.
Dance then wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be
And I'll lead you all in the dance, said he.
Nine Carols or Ballads (1967) "Lord of the Dance"
It's God they ought to crucify
Instead of you and me,
I said to the carpenter
A-hanging on the tree.
Nine Carols or Ballads (1967) "Friday Morning"
3.29 Pablo Casals
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1973
It [the cello] is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but
younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.
In Time 29 Apr. 1957
3.30 Ted Castle (Baron Castle of Islington)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-1979
In place of strife.
Title of Labour Government's White Paper, 17 Jan. 1969, suggested by
Castle to his wife, Barbara Castle (Secretary of State for
Employment)--see Barbara Castle Diaries (1984) 15 Jan. 1969
3.31 Harry Castling and C. W. Murphy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Let's all go down the Strand!
Let's all go down the Strand!
I'll be leader, you can march behind
Come with me, and see what we can find
Let's all go down the Strand!
Let's All Go Down the Strand! (1909 song)
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics
and art are strangers.
Commonweal 17 Apr. 1936
The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
O Pioneers! (1913) pt. 1, ch. 5
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live
than other things do.
O Pioneers! (1913) pt. 2, ch. 8
3.34 Mr Justice Caulfield (Sir Bernard Caulfield)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-
Remember Mary Archer in the witness box. Your vision of her will probably
never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she
have--without the strain of this trial--a radiance?
Summing up of court case between Jeffrey Archer and the News of the World,
July 1987, in The Times 24 July 1987
3.35 Charles Causley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-
O are you the boy
Who would wait on the quay
With the silver penny
And the apricot tree?
Farewell, Aggie Weston (1951) "Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience"
Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.
Union Street (1957) "Timothy Winters"
What are we all waiting for, gathered together like this on the public
square?
The Barbarians are coming today.
(Waiting for the Barbarians, 1904) in Poems (1963)
You will find no new places, no other seas,
The town will follow you.
(Poems, 1911) ("The Town")
They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing,
as I do, in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not
enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
Words spoken in prison the night before her execution, in The Times
23 Oct. 1915
3.38 Lord David Cecil
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1986
The primary object of a student of literature is to be delighted. His duty
is to enjoy himself: his efforts should be directed to developing his
faculty of appreciation.
Reading as one of the Fine Arts (1949) p. 4
3.39 Patrick Reginald Chalmers
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1942
What's lost upon the roundabouts we pulls up on the swings!
Green Days and Blue Days (1912) "Roundabouts and Swings"
3.40 Joseph Chamberlain
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1836-1914
In politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.
In letter from A. J. Balfour to 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, 24 Mar. 1886,
in A. J. Balfour Chapters of Autobiography (1930) ch. 16
It is said that the City is the centre of the world's finance, that the
fate of our manufactures therefore is a secondary consideration; that,
provided that the City of London remains, as it is at present, the
clearing-house of the world, any other nation may be its workshop. Now
I ask you, gentlemen, whether...that is not a very short-sighted view.
Speech at the Guildhall, 19 Jan. 1904, in The Times 20 Jan. 1904
In the great revolution which separated the United States from Great
Britain the greatest man that that revolution produced...was Alexander
Hamilton...he left a precious legacy to his countrymen when he disclosed
to them the secrets of union and when he said to them, "Learn to think
continentally." And, my fellow-citizens, if I may venture to give you
a message, now I would say to you, "Learn to think Imperially."
Speech at the Guildhall, 19 Jan. 1904, in The Times 20 Jan. 1904
The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has
come.
Speech at Birmingham, 12 May 1904, in The Times 13 May 1904
We are not downhearted. The only trouble is we cannot understand what is
happening to our neighbours.
Speech at Smethwick, 18 Jan. 1906, in The Times 19 Jan. 1906
In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners,
but all are losers.
Speech at Kettering, 3 July 1938, in The Times 4 July 1938
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging
trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away
country [Czechoslovakia] between people of whom we know nothing.
Broadcast speech, 27 Sept. 1938, in The Times 28 Sept. 1938
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler,
and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine...."We
regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval
Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war
with one another again."
Speech at Heston Airport, 30 Sept. 1938, in The Times 1 Oct. 1938
My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has
come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it
is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And
now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.
Speech from window of 10 Downing Street, 30 Sept. 1938, in The Times
1 Oct. 1938
This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German
government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven
o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from
Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that
no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country
is at war with Germany.
Radio broadcast, 3 Sept. 1939, in The Times 4 Sept. 1939
Whatever may be the reason--whether it was that Hitler thought he might
get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was
that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete--however,
one thing is certain--he missed the bus.
Speech at Central Hall, Westminster, 4 Apr. 1940, in The Times 5 Apr. 1940
3.42 Harry Champion
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1942
See Charles Collins, E. A. Sheppard, and Fred Terry (3.79)
3.43 Raymond Chandler
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1959
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is
neither tarnished nor afraid.
Atlantic Monthly Dec. 1944 "The Simple Art of Murder"
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not
shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display
handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on
them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it.
The Big Sleep (1939) ch. 1
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass
window.
Farewell, My Lovely (1940) ch. 13
Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and
tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is
something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an
infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.
Letter to Edward Weeks, 18 Jan. 1947, in F. MacShane Life of Raymond
Chandler (1976) ch. 7
A big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup.
The Little Sister (1949) ch. 26 (of Los Angeles)
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to
Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
Letter to Charles W. Morton, 12 Dec. 1945, in Dorothy Gardiner and
Katherine S. Walker Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962) p. 126
Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
In Marcel Haedrich Coco Chanel, Her Life, Her Secrets (1971) ch. 1
3.45 Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1977
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
My Autobiography (1964) ch. 10
3.46 Arthur Chapman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1935
Out where the handclasp's a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
That's where the West begins.
Out Where the West Begins (1916) p. 1
3.47 Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Graham Chapman 1941-1989
John Cleese 1939-
Terry Gilliam 1940-
Eric Idle 1943-
Terry Jones 1942-
Michael Palin 1943-
I'm a lumberjack
And I'm OK
I sleep all night
And I work all day.
Monty Python's Big Red Book (1971)
And now for something completely different.
Catch-phrase popularized in Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC TV
programme, 1969-74)
Your wife interested in...photographs? Eh? Know what I mean--photographs?
He asked him knowingly...nudge nudge, snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, say
no more.
Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC TV programme, 1969), in Roger Wilmut
From Fringe to Flying Circus (1980) ch. 11
customer: I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not
half an hour ago from this very boutique.
shopkeeper: Oh yes, the Norwegian Blue--what's wrong with it?
customer: I'll tell you what's wrong with it--it's dead that's what's
wrong with it.
shopkeeper: No, no--it's resting....It's probably pining for the
fiords....
customer: It's not pining--it's passed on! This parrot is no more! It
has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late
parrot! It's a stiff! Bereft of life it rests in peace--if you hadn't
nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It's rung down
the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!
Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC TV programme, 1969), in Roger Wilmut
From Fringe to Flying Circus (1980) ch. 11
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is
surprisesemdash.surprise and fear...fear and surprise...our two weapons
are fear and surprise--and ruthless efficiency...our three weapons are
fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion
to the Pope...our four...no....Amongst our weapons--amongst our
weaponry--are such elements as fear, surprise....I'll come in again.
Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC TV programme, 1970), in Roger Wilmut
From Fringe to Flying Circus (1980) ch. 11
3.48 Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1948-
I have not the slightest hesitation in making the observation that much of
British management doesn't seem to understand the importance of the human
factor.
Speech to Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, 21 Feb. 1979, in Daily
Telegraph 22 Feb. 1979
I just come and talk to the plants, really--very important to talk to
them, they respond I find.
Television interview, 21 Sept. 1986, in Daily Telegraph 22 Sept. 1986
We do need a sense of urgency in our outlook in the regeneration of
industry and enterprise, because otherwise what really worries me is that
we are going to end up as a fourth-rate country and I don't want to see
that.
Speech at Edinburgh, 26 Nov. 1985, in Scotsman 27 Nov. 1985
Instead of designing an extension to the elegant fa‡ade of the National
Gallery which complements it...it looks as if we may be presented with
a kind of vast municipal fire station....I would understand better this
type of high-tech approach if you demolished the whole of Trafalgar Square
and started again...but what is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on
the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.
Speech to Royal Institute of British Architects, 30 May 1984, in The Times
31 May 1984. Cf. Countess Spencer
3.50 G. K. Chesterton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1936
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience
is only an adventure wrongly considered.
All Things Considered (1908) "On Running after one's Hat"
No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness--or so good as
drink.
All Things Considered (1908) "Wine When it is Red"
Of those days the tale is told that I once sent a telegram to my wife in
London, which ran: "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?"
I cannot remember whether this story is true; but it is not unlikely, or,
I think, unreasonable.
Autobiography (1936) ch. 16
They died to save their country and they only saved the world.
Ballad of St Barbara and Other Verses (1922) "English Graves"
Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.
Ballad of the White Horse (1911) bk. 1, p. 1
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Ballad of the White Horse (1911) bk. 1, p. 18
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.
Ballad of the White Horse (1911) bk. 2, p. 35
The thing on the blind side of the heart,
On the wrong side of the door,
The green plant groweth, menacing
Almighty lovers in the Spring;
There is always a forgotten thing,
And love is not secure.
Ballad of the White Horse (1911) bk. 3, p. 52
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
Defendant (1901) "Defence of Penny Dreadfuls"
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
Defendant (1901) "Defence of Slang"
"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of
saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or
sober."
Defendant (1901) "Defence of Patriotism"
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
"I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 5 "Wine and Water"
God made the wicked Grocer
For a mystery and a sign,
That men might shun the awful shops
And go to inns to dine.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 6 "Song against Grocers"
He keeps a lady in a cage
Most cruelly all day,
And makes her count and calls her "Miss"
Until she fades away.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 6 "Song against Grocers"
The folk that live in Liverpool, their heart is in their boots;
They go to hell like lambs, they do, because the hooter hoots.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 7 "Me Heart"
They haven't got no noses,
The fallen sons of Eve.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 15 "Song of Quoodle"
And goodness only knowses
The Noselessness of Man.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 15 "Song of Quoodle"
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 15
Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 18 "Song of Right and Wrong"
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 21 "Rolling English Road"
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
Flying Inn (1914) ch. 21 "Rolling English Road"
Ten thousand women marched through the streets of London [in support of
women's suffrage] saying: "We will not be dictated to," and then went off
to become stenographers.
In M. Ffinch G. K. Chesterton (1986) ch. 11
The word "orthodoxy" not only no longer means being right; it practically
means being wrong.
Heretics (1905) ch. 1
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only
thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
Heretics (1905) ch. 3
The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. It is
a disease which arises from men not having sufficient power of expression
to utter and get rid of the element of art in their being.
Heretics (1905) ch. 17
Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.
Heretics (1905) ch. 20
After the first silence the small man said to the other: "Where does a
wise man hide a pebble?" And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the
beach." The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does
a wise man hide a leaf?" And the other answered: "In the forest."
Innocence of Father Brown (1911) "The Sign of the Broken Sword"
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their
property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Man who was Thursday (1908) ch. 4
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at
children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end,
which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) bk. 1, ch. 1
Why do you rush through the fields in trains,
Guessing so much and so much.
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves and such?
New Poems (1933) "The Fat White Woman Speaks" (an answer to Frances
Cornford, see 61:8)
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means
government by the badly educated.
New York Times 1 Feb. 1931, pt. 5, p. 1
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 2
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and
cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in
any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic,
not in imagination.
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 2
Mr Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any
poetry.
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 3
Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition
means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It
is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small
and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All
democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth;
tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.
Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our
groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he
is our father.
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 4
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you
leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you
leave it to a torrent of change.
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 7
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 7
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run.
Poems (1915) "Lepanto"
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Poems (1915) "Lepanto"
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!
Poems (1915) "A Hymn"
Are they clinging to their crosses, F. E. Smith?
Poems (1915) "Antichrist"
Talk about the pews and steeples
And the Cash that goes therewith!
But the souls of Christian peoples...
Chuck it, Smith!
Poems (1915) "Antichrist"
The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame
Still sat unconquered in a ring,
Remembering him like anything.
Poems (1915) "Shakespeare Memorial"
John Grubby, who was short and stout
And troubled with religious doubt,
Refused about the age of three
To sit upon the curate's knee.
Poems (1915) "New Freethinker"
And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our names in print.
Poems (1915) "Song of Defeat"
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
Poems (1915) "The Secret People"
We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.
Poems (1915) "The Secret People"
They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of Light and Mrs Humphry Ward--
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored--
I rose politely in the club
And said,"I feel a little bored.
Will someone take me to a pub?"
Poems (1915) "Ballade of an Anti-Puritan"
The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall.
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours--on the wall--
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me....After all
I think I will not hang myself today.
Poems (1915) "Ballade of Suicide"
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the
problem.
Scandal of Father Brown (1935) "Point of a Pin"
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only
one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
Tremendous Trifles (1909) "On Lying in Bed"
Hardy went down to botanize in the swamp, while Meredith climbed towards
the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily dressed Walt
Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming
over the village idiot.
Victorian Age in Literature (1912) ch. 2
He [Tennyson] could not think up to the height of his own towering style.
Victorian Age in Literature (1912) ch. 3
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been
found difficult; and left untried.
What's Wrong with the World (1910) pt. 1, ch. 5
She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that
if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
What's Wrong with the World (1910) pt. 4, ch. 14
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.
Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900) "The Donkey"
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
Wild Knight and Other Poems (1900) "The Donkey"
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.
Wine, Water and Song (1915) "Song of the Strange Ascetic"
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to
want it.
Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) "Paradise of Thieves"
Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who
never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) "The Purple Wig"
3.51 Maurice Chevalier
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1888-1972
On his seventy-second birthday in 1960, he [Chevalier] was asked what he
felt about the advancing years. "Considering the alternative," he said,
"it's not too bad at all."
Michael Freedland Maurice Chevalier (1981) ch. 20
The [firing] squad took up their positions across the prison yard. "Come
closer, boys," Childers called out to them. "It will be easier for you."
Burke Wilkinson Zeal of Convert (1976) ch. 26
3.53 Charles Chilton
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As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action
arise, human science is at a loss.
Television interview, 30 Mar. 1978, in Listener 6 Apr. 1978
The notion "grammatical" cannot be identified with "meaningful" or
"significant" in any semantic sense. Sentences (1) and (2) are equally
nonsensical, but...only the former is grammatical.
(1) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
(2) Furiously sleep ideas green colourless.
Syntactic Structures (1957) ch. 2
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing that to
win a war is as disastrous as to lose one!
Autobiography (1977) pt. 10
"This affair must all be unravelled from within." He [Hercule Poirot]
tapped his forehead. "These little grey cells. It is 'up to them'--as you
say over here."
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) ch. 10
Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it.
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) ch. 36
3.56 Frank E. Churchill
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1901-1942
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Title of song (1933; probably written in collaboration with Ann Ronell)
3.57 Sir Winston Churchill
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1874-1965
In defeat unbeatable: in victory unbearable.
In Edward Marsh Ambrosia and Small Beer (1964) ch. 5 (describing Viscount
Montgomery)
After the war one quip which went the rounds of Westminster was attributed
to Churchill himself. "An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and
when the door was opened [Clement] Attlee got out." When [John] Colville
repeated this, and its attribution, to Churchill he obviously did not like
it. His face set hard, and "after an awful pause" he said: "Mr Attlee is
an honourable and gallant gentleman, and a faithful colleague who served
his country well at the time of her greatest need. I should be obliged if
you would make it clear whenever an occasion arises that I would never
make such a remark about him, and that I strongly disapprove of anybody
who does."
Kenneth Harris Attlee (1982) ch. 16
Always remember, Clemmie, that I have taken more out of alcohol than
alcohol has taken out of me.
In Quentin Reynolds By Quentin Reynolds (1964) ch. 11
[Clement Attlee is] a modest man who has a good deal to be modest about.
In Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books 27 June 1954
Question: What are the desirable qualifications for any young man who
wishes to become a politician?
Mr Churchill: It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen
tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability
afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
In B. Adler Churchill Wit (1965) p. 4
The British people have taken for themselves this motto--"Business carried
on as usual during alterations on the map of Europe." They expect the
navy, on which they have lavished so much care and expense, to make that
good, and that is what, upon the whole, we are actually achieving at the
present time.
Speech at the Guildhall, 9 Nov. 1914, in Complete Speeches (1974) vol. 3,
p. 2341
Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt....We shall
not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock
of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us
down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
Speech on radio, 9 Feb. 1941, in Complete Speeches (1974) vol. 6, p. 6350
The people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: "You have
committed every crime under the sun....We will have no truce or parley
with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your
worst--and we will do our best."
Speech at County Hall, London, 14 July 1941, in Complete Speeches (1974)
vol. 6, p. 6451
Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days.
These are not dark days: these are great days--the greatest days our
country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been
allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making
these days memorable in the history of our race.
Speech at Harrow School, 29 Oct. 1941, in Complete Speeches (1974) vol. 6,
p. 6500
It becomes still more difficult to reconcile Japanese action with prudence
or even with sanity. What kind of a people do they think we are?
Speech to US Congress, 26 Dec. 1941, in Complete Speeches (1974) vol. 6,
p. 6540
When I warned them [the French Government] that Britain would fight on
alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his
divided Cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like
a chicken." Some chicken! Some neck!
Speech to Canadian Parliament, 30 Dec. 1941, in Complete Speeches (1974)
vol. 6, p. 6544
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into
babies. Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.
Speech on radio, 21 Mar. 1943, in Complete Speeches (1974) vol. 7, p. 6761
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has
descended across the Continent.
Speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 5 Mar. 1946, in Complete
Speeches (1974) vol. 7, p. 7290
Somebody said, "One never hears of Baldwin nowadays--he might as well be
dead." "No," said Winston, "not dead. But the candle in that great turnip
has gone out."
Harold Nicolson Diary 17 Aug. 1950, in Diaries and Letters (1968) p. 193
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it
is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Speech at the Mansion House, London, 10 Nov. 1942, in End of the Beginning
(1943) p. 214
We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in
order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.
Speech in London, 10 Nov. 1942, in End of the Beginning (1943) p. 215
Once he [Churchill] said to me, "Alfred, if you met Picasso coming down
the street, would you join with me in kicking his something something
something?" I said, "Yes, sir, I would."
Sir Alfred Munnings in speech at Royal Academy, 28 Apr. 1949, in The
Finish (1952) ch. 22
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and
the lash.
In Sir Peter Gretton Former Naval Person (1968) ch. 1
A labour contract into which men enter voluntarily for a limited and for a
brief period, under which they are paid wages which they consider
adequate, under which they are not bought or sold and from which they can
obtain relief...on payment of њ17.10s, the cost of their passage, may not
be a healthy or proper contract, but it cannot in the opinion of His
Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of
the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
Hansard 22 Feb. 1906, col. 555
He [Lord Charles Beresford] is one of those orators of whom it was well
said, "Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say;
when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying; and when
they have sat down, they do not know what they have said."
Hansard 20 Dec. 1912, col. 1893
The whole map of Europe has been changed. The position of countries has
been violently altered. The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on
affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and
tremendous changes in the deluge of the world, but as the deluge subsides
and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and
Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the
few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept
the world.
Hansard 16 Feb. 1922, col. 1270
I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the
fire.
Hansard 7 July 1926, col. 2216 (replying to complaints of his bias in
editing the British Gazette during the General Strike)
I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's
circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the
exhibit on the programme which I most desired to see was the one described
as "The Boneless Wonder." My parents judged that that spectacle would be
too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50
years to see the boneless wonder [Ramsay Macdonald] sitting on the
Treasury Bench.
Hansard 28 Jan. 1931, col. 1021
So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be
undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for
fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
Hansard 12 Nov. 1936, col. 1107
The utmost he [Neville Chamberlain] has been able to gain for
Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the
German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has
been content to have them served to him course by course.
Hansard 5 Oct. 1938, col. 361
I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this
Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Hansard 13 May 1940, col. 1502
You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land
and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give
us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark,
lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is
our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory, victory at all costs, victory
in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be;
for without victory, there is no survival.
Hansard 13 May 1940, col. 1502
At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "Come
then, let us go forward together with our united strength."
Hansard 13 May 1940, col. 1502
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have
fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious
apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the
end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we
shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we
shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the
beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the
fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island
or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond
the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the
struggle, until, in God's good time, the new world, with all its power and
might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
Hansard 4 June 1940, col. 796
What General Weygand called the "Battle of France" is over. I expect that
the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the
survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life
and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury
and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that
he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand
up to him all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move
forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail then the whole world,
including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for,
will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps
more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore
brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British
Commonwealth and its Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still
say, "This was their finest hour."
Hansard 18 June 1940, col. 60
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed
throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the
British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant
challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their
prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so
much owed by so many to so few.
Hansard 20 Aug. 1940, col. 1166
The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who
like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.
Hansard 10 June 1941, col. 152
We make this wide encircling movement in the Mediterranean, having for its
primary object the recovery of the command of that vital sea, but also
having for its object the exposure of the under-belly of the Axis,
especially Italy, to heavy attack.
Hansard 11 Nov. 1942, col. 28 (often misquoted as "the soft under-belly
of the Axis")
He [President Roosevelt] devised the extraordinary measure of assistance
called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and
unsordid financial act of any country in all history.
Hansard 17 Apr. 1945, col. 76
Unless the right hon. Gentleman [Mr Bevan] changes his policy and methods
and moves without the slightest delay, he will be as great a curse to this
country in time of peace, as he was a squalid nuisance in time of war.
Hansard 6 Dec. 1945, col. 2544
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world
of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.
Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government
except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Hansard 11 Nov. 1947, col. 206
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a
mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian
national interest.
Radio talk, 1 Oct. 1939, in Into Battle (1941) p. 131
Nous attendons l'invasion promise de longue date. Les poissons aussi.
We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.
Radio broadcast to the French people, 21 Oct. 1940, in Into Battle (1941)
p. 298
Shortly after returning from his tour of the Near East, Anthony Eden
submitted a long-winded report to the Prime Minister on his experiences
and impressions. Churchill, it is told, returned it to his War Minister
with a note saying: "As far as I can see you have used every clich‚ except
'God is Love' and 'Please adjust your dress before leaving.'"
Life 9 Dec. 1940 (when this story was repeated in the Daily Mirror,
Churchill denied that it was true)
I wrote my name at the top of the page. I wrote down the number of the
question "1." After much reflection I put a bracket round it thus "(1)."
But thereafter I could not think of anything connected with it that was
either relevant or true....It was from these slender indications of
scholarship that Mr Welldon drew the conclusion that I was worthy to pass
into Harrow. It is very much to his credit.
My Early Life (1930) ch. 2
By being so long in the lowest form [at Harrow] I gained an immense
advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and
Greek....But I was taught English....Thus I got into my bones the
essential structure of the ordinary British sentence--which is a noble
thing....Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would
make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn
Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat.
My Early Life (1930) ch. 2
Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have
never yet been invested.
My Early Life (1930) ch. 2
So they told me how Mr Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought
served him right.
My Early Life (1930) ch. 2
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
My Early Life (1930) ch. 9
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
Speech at White House, 26 June 1954, in New York Times 27 June 1954, p. 1
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
At news conference in Washington, 1954, in New York Times 25 Jan. 1965
(Suppl.) p. 7
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Speech at Harvard, 6 Sept. 1943, in Onwards to Victory (1944) p. 238
It is said that Mr Winston Churchill once made this marginal comment
against a sentence that clumsily avoided a prepositional ending: "This is
the sort of English up with which I will not put."
Ernest Gowers Plain Words (1948) ch. 9
Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory:
magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.
Second World War (1948) vol. 1, epigraph (Sir Edward Marsh in A Number of
People (1939) p. 152, says that this motto occurred to Churchill shortly
after the First World War)
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for
suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once "The
Unnecessary War."
Second World War (1948) vol. 1, p. viii
I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had
been but a preparation for this hour and this trial. Eleven years in the
political wilderness had freed me from ordinary Party antagonisms. My
warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and
were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not
be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for
it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not
fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and
had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.
Second World War (1948) vol. 1, p. 526
No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.
Letter to Lord Wavell, 26 Nov. 1940, in Second World War (1949) vol. 2,
ch. 27
It may almost be said, "Before Alamein we never had a victory. After
Alamein we never had a defeat."
Second World War (1951) vol. 4, ch. 33
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And
the tigers are getting hungry.
Letter, 11 Nov. 1937, in Step by Step (1939) p. 186. Cf. the proverb "He
who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount" (see Concise Oxford Dictionary of
Proverbs under rides)
You must rank me and my colleagues as strong partisans of national
compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to
the grave.
Radio broadcast, 21 Mar. 1943, in The Times 22 Mar. 1943
I have never accepted what many people have kindly said--namely, that I
inspired the nation....It was the nation and the race dwelling all round
the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to
give the roar. I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the
right place to use his claws.
Speech at Westminster Hall, 30 Nov. 1954, in The Times 1 Dec. 1954
Mr Attlee, whom Churchill once playfully described as a "sheep in sheep's
clothing."
Lord Home Way the Wind Blows (1976) ch. 6. Cf. Sir Edmund Gosse
Take away that pudding--it has no theme.
In Lord Home Way the Wind Blows (1976) ch. 16
We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.
In Violet Bonham-Carter Winston Churchill as I Knew Him (1965) ch. 1
Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an
afternoon.
World Crisis (1927) pt. 1, ch. 5
La vittoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l'insuccesso.
Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
Diary 9 Sept. 1942 (1946) vol. 2, p. 196
3.59 Brian Clark
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1932-
Whose life is it anyway?
Title of play (1977)
3.60 Kenneth Clark (Baron Clark)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1903-1983
Perrault's fa‡ade [of the Louvre] reflects the triumph of an authoritarian
state, and of those logical solutions that Colbert, the great
administrator of the seventeenth century, was imposing on politics,
economics and every department of contemporary life, including, above all,
the arts. This gives French Classical architecture a certain inhumanity.
It was the work not of craftsmen, but of wonderfully gifted civil
servants.
Civilization (1969) ch. 9
3.61 Arthur C. Clarke
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1917-
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible
he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is
very probably wrong.
In New Yorker 9 Aug. 1969
3.62 Grant Clarke and Edgar Leslie
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Grant Clarke 1891-1931
Edgar Leslie 1885-1976
He'd have to get under, get out and get under
And fix up his automobile.
He'd Have to Get Under--Get Out and Get Under (1913 song; music by
Maurice Abrahams)
What we're saying today is that you're either part of the solution or
you're part of the problem.
Speech in San Francisco, 1968, in R. Scheer Eldridge Cleaver, Post Prison
Writings and Speeches (1969) p. xxxii
3.64 John Cleese
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1939-
See Graham Chapman (3.47)
3.65 John Cleese and Connie Booth
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
John Cleese 1939-
They're Germans. Don't mention the war.
Fawlty Towers "The Germans" (BBC TV programme, 1975), in Complete Fawlty
Towers (1988) p. 153
So Harry says, "You don't like me any more. Why not?" And he says,
"Because you've got so terribly pretentious." And Harry says,
"Pretentious? Moi?"
Fawlty Towers "The Psychiatrist" (BBC TV programme, 1979), in Complete
Fawlty Towers (1988) p. 190
3.66 Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1959
The golf-links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The labouring children can look out
And watch the men at play.
New York Tribune 23 Jan. 1914 "For Some Must Watch, While--"
3.67 Georges Clemenceau
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1841-1929
La guerre, c'est une chose trop grave pour la confier … des militaires.
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
Attributed to Clemenceau e.g. in Hampden Jackson Clemenceau and the Third
Republic (1946) p. 228, but also attributed to Briand and Talleyrand
Politique int‚rieure, je fais la guerre; politique ext‚rieure, je fais
toujours la guerre. Je fais toujours la guerre.
My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time
I wage war.
Speech to French Chamber of Deputies, 8 Mar. 1918, in Discours de Guerre
(War Speeches, 1968) p. 172
Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix.
It is easier to make war than to make peace.
Speech at Verdun, 20 July 1919, in Discours de Paix (Peace Speeches, 1938)
p. 122
In 1950 he [Harlan Cleveland] invented the phrase, so thrashed to death in
later years, "the revolution of rising expectations."
Arthur Schlesinger Thousand Days (1965) ch. 16
3.69 Richard Cobb
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-
In an operation of this kind one would not go for a Proust or a Joyce--not
that I would know about that, never having read either.
Speech at Booker Prize awards in London, 18 Oct. 1984, in The Times
19 Oct. 1984
Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.
In Time of Trouble (1956) ch. 10 (the words with which Cockburn claims to
have won a competition at The Times for the dullest headline)
3.71 Jean Cocteau
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1963
Le tact dans l' audace c'est de savoir jusqu'o— on peut aller trop loin.
Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go too far.
Le Coq et l'Arlequin (1918) in Le Rappel … l'ordre (Recall to Order,
1926) p. 2
Le pire drame pour un poЉte, c'est d'€tre admir‚ par malentendu.
The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Le Coq et l'Arlequin (1918) in Le Rappel … l'ordre (Recall to Order,
1926) p. 20
S'il faut choisir un crucifi‚, la foule sauve toujours Barabbas.
If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save
Barabbas.
Le Coq et l'Arlequin (1918) in Le Rappel … l'ordre (Recall to Order,
1926) p. 39
L'Histoire est un alliage de r‚el et de mensonge. Le r‚el de l'Histoire
devient un mensonge. L'irr‚el de la fable devient v‚rit‚.
History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History
becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
Journal d'un inconnu (Diary of an Unknown Man, 1953) p. 143
Vivre est une chute horizontale.
Life is a horizontal fall.
Opium (1930) p. 37
Quand j'ai ‚crit que Victor Hugo ‚tait un fou qui se croyait Victor Hugo,
je ne plaisantais pas.
When I wrote that Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo,
I was not joking.
Opium (1930) p. 77
What a dump!
Beyond the Forest (1949 film; line spoken by Bette Davis, entering
a room)
3.73 George M. Cohan
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1878-1942
It was Cohan who first said to a newspaperman (who wanted some information
about Broadway Jones in 1912), "I don't care what you say about me, as
long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name
right."
John McCabe George M. Cohan (1973) ch. 13
Give my regards to Broadway,
Remember me to Herald Square,
Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street
That I will soon be there.
Give My Regards to Broadway (1904 song)
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We'll be over, we're coming over
And we won't come back till it's over, over there.
Over There (1917 song)
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
A Yankee Doodle, do or die;
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam's,
Born on the fourth of July.
I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart,
She's my Yankee Doodle joy.
Yankee Doodle came to London,
Just to ride the ponies;
I am the Yankee Doodle Boy.
Yankee Doodle Boy (1904 song)
His blade struck the water a full second before any other: the lad had
started well. Nor did he flag as the race wore on: as the others tired, he
seemed to grow more fresh, until at length, as the boats began to near the
winning-post, his oar was dipping into the water nearly twice as often as
any other.
Sandford of Merton (1903) ch. 12 (often misquoted as "All rowed fast, but
none so fast as stroke")
Il d‚couvrait...le monde des ‚motions qu'on nomme, … la l‚gЉre, physiques.
He was discovering...the world of the emotions that are so lightly called
physical.
Le Bl‚ en herbe (Ripening Seed, 1923) p. 161
Quand elle lЉve ses paupiЉres, on dirait qu'elle se d‚shabille.
When she raises her eyelids, it is as if she is undressing.
Claudine s'en va (Claudine Goes Away, 1931) p. 59
Ne porte jamais de bijoux artistiques, ‡a d‚considЉre complЉtement une
femme.
Don't ever wear artistic jewellery; it wrecks a woman's reputation.
Gigi (1944) p. 40
3.76 R. G. Collingwood
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1943
Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in
that work does what he wants to do.
Speculum Mentis (1924) p. 25
3.77 Charles Collins and Fred W. Leigh
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My old man said, "Follow the van,
Don't dilly-dally on the way!"
Off went the cart with the home packed in it,
I walked behind with my old cock linnet.
But I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied,
Lost the van and don't know where to roam.
You can't trust the "specials" like the old time "coppers"
When you can't find your way home.
Don't Dilly-Dally on the Way (1919 song; made famous by Marie Lloyd)
3.78 Charles Collins and Fred Murray
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Boiled beef and carrots.
Title of song (1910; made famous by Harry Champion)
3.79 Charles Collins, E. A. Sheppard, and Fred Terry
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Any old iron, any old iron,
Any any old old iron?
You look neat
Talk about a treat,
You look dapper from your napper to your feet.
Dressed in style, brand new tile,
And your father's old green tie on,
But I wouldn't give you tuppence for your old watch chain;
Old iron, old iron?
Any Old Iron (1911 song; made famous by Harry Champion; the second line
is often sung as "Any any any old iron?")
3.80 John Churton Collins
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1848-1908
To ask advice is in nine cases out of ten to tout for flattery.
In L. C. Collins Life of John Churton Collins (1912) p. 316
3.81 Michael Collins
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1890-1922
Think--what I have got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these
past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will
anyone? I tell you this--early this morning I signed my death warrant.
I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous--a bullet may just as well
have done the job five years ago.
Letter, 6 Dec. 1921, in T. R. Dwyer Michael Collins and the Treaty (1981)
ch. 4
3.82 Betty Comden and Adolph Green
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Betty Comden 1919-
Adolph Green 1915-
New York, New York,--a helluva town,
The Bronx is up but the Battery's down,
And people ride in a hole in the ground:
New York, New York,--It's a helluva town.
New York, New York (1945 song; music by Leonard Bernstein)
The party's over.
Title of song (1956; music by Jule Styne)
"Well, of course, people are only human," said Dudley to his brother, as
they walked to the house behind the women. "But it really does not seem
much for them to be."
A Family and a Fortune (1939) ch. 2
There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not
always the best.
The Mighty and their Fall (1961) ch. 7
There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
Mother and Son (1955) ch. 10
As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have
no plots.
In R. Lehmann et al. Orion I (1945) p. 25
3.84 Billy Connolly
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1942-
Marriage is a wonderful invention; but, then again, so is a bicycle repair
kit.
In Duncan Campbell Billy Connolly (1976) p. 92
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice;
journalism what will be read once.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 3
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so
those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 10
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 13
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 14
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total
dependence on the appreciation of others.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 16
I have called this style the Mandarin style, since it is beloved by
literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as
possible to the spoken one. It is the style of those writers whose
tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than
they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 20
In the eighteenth century he [Alec Douglas-Home] would have become Prime
Minister before he was thirty; as it was he appeared honourably ineligible
for the struggle of life.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 23
Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be
called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence.
Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 24
It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist
will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his
despair.
Horizon Dec. 1949--Jan. 1950, p. 362
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the
public and have no self.
New Statesman 25 Feb. 1933
Destroy him as you will, the bourgeois always bounces up--execute him,
expropriate him, starve him out en masse, and he reappears in your
children.
In Observer 7 Mar. 1937
He [George Orwell] could not blow his nose without moralising on the state
of the handkerchief industry.
Sunday Times 29 Sept. 1968
The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the only function of a
writer is to produce a masterpiece. No other task is of any consequence.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1
There is no fury like a woman looking for a new lover.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979)
160:15
In the sex-war thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness
of the female.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to
walk.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1
The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. Everything
over-ripens in the same way. The disasters of the world are due to its
inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2. See also George Orwell (15.24)
The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2
We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 2
Peeling off the kilometres to the tune of "Blue Skies," sizzling down the
long black liquid reaches of Nationale Sept, the plane trees going
sha-sha-sha through the open window, the windscreen yellowing with crushed
midges, she with the Michelin beside me, a handkerchief binding her hair.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 3
Our memories are card-indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by
authorities whom we do not control.
Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 3
3.86 James Connolly
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1916
The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the
slave of that slave.
Re-conquest of Ireland (1915) p. 38
3.87 Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1857-1924
In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom.
Arrow of Gold (author's note, 1920, to 1924 Uniform Edition) p. viii
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from
those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it.
Heart of Darkness ch. 1, in Youth (1902)
We live, as we dream--alone.
Heart of Darkness ch. 1, in Youth (1902)
Exterminate all the brutes!
Heart of Darkness ch. 2, in Youth (1902)
He [Kurtz] cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,--he cried out
twice, a cry that was no more than a breath--"The horror! The horror!"
Heart of Darkness ch. 3, in Youth (1902)
Mistah Kurtz--he dead.
Heart of Darkness ch. 3, in Youth (1902)
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.
If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to
do, he drowns--nicht wahr?...No! I tell you! The way is to the
destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands
and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up....In the
destructive element immerse....That was the way. To follow the dream, and
again to follow the dream--and so--ewig--usque ad finem.
Lord Jim (1900) ch. 20
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
Lord Jim (1900) ch. 34
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should
carry its justification in every line.
The Nigger of the Narcissus, author's note, in New Review Dec. 1897
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of
flattering illusions.
Nostromo (1904) pt. 1, ch. 6
It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.
Outcast of the Islands (1896) pt. 3, ch. 2
The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket.
Secret Agent (1907) ch. 4
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upwards on the miseries
or credulities of mankind.
Some Reminiscences (1912; in USA entitled "A Personal Record") p. 19
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the
unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement--but it passes away
from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.
Under Western Eyes (1911) pt. 2, ch. 3
A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are
quite capable of every wickedness.
Under Western Eyes (1911) pt. 2, ch. 4
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any
more--the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth,
and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to
love, to vain effort--to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the
heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every
year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too
soon, too soon--before life itself.
Youth (1902) p. 41
Our motto: Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
Superwoman (1975) p. 15
First things first, second things never.
Superwoman (1975) p. 157
3.89 A. J. Cook
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1931
Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day.
Speech at York, 3 Apr. 1926, in The Times 5 Apr. 1926 (referring to
miners' slogan)
3.90 Dan Cook
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.
In Washington Post 3 June 1978
3.91 Peter Cook
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1937-
I have recently been travelling round the world--on your behalf, and at
your expense--visiting some of the chaps with whom I hope to be shaping
your future. I went first to Germany, and there I spoke with the German
Foreign Minister, Herr...Herr and there, and we exchanged many frank words
in our respective languages.
Beyond the Fringe (1961 revue) "TVPM," in Roger Wilmut Complete Beyond
the Fringe (1987) p. 54
Yes, I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin, never had the
Latin for the judging, I just never had sufficient of it to get through
the rigorous judging exams. They're noted for their rigour. People come
staggering out saying, "My God, what a rigorous exam"--and so I became a
miner instead.
Beyond the Fringe (1961 revue) "Sitting on the Bench," in Roger Wilmut
Complete Beyond the Fringe (1987) p. 97
Shortly after Mr Coolidge had gone to the White House, Mrs Coolidge was
unable to go to church with him one Sunday. At lunch she asked what the
sermon was about. "Sins," he said. "Well, what did he say about sin?" "He
was against it."
John H. McKee Coolidge: Wit and Wisdom (1933) p. 4 (but Edward C.
Lathem's Meet Calvin Coolidge (1960) p. 151 quotes Mrs Coolidge as saying
that this was one of "the stories which might reasonably be attributed to
him [Coolidge] but which did not originate with him")
Mr Coolidge...interrupted a discussion of cancellation of the war debts
with: "Well, they hired the money, didn't they?"
John H. McKee Coolidge: Wit and Wisdom (1933) p. 118
There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody,
anywhere, any time.
Telegram to Samuel Gompers, 14 Sept. 1919, in Have Faith in Massachusetts
(1919) p. 223
Civilization and profits go hand in hand.
Speech in New York, 27 Nov. 1920, in New York Times 28 Nov. 1920, p. 20
The chief business of the American people is business.
Speech in Washington, 17 Jan. 1925, in New York Times 18 Jan. 1925, p. 19
I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight.
Statement issued at Rapid City, South Dakota, 2 Aug. 1927, in New York
Times 3 Aug. 1927, p. 1
The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind
of artist.
Transformation of Nature in Art (1934) ch. 2
3.94 Alfred Duff Cooper (Viscount Norwich)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1954
I really did enjoy Belvoir you know....You must I think have enjoyed it
too, with your two stout lovers frowning at one another across the hearth
rug, while your small, but perfectly formed one kept the party in a roar.
Letter to Lady Diana Manners, Oct. 1914, in Artemis Cooper Durable Fire
(1983) p. 17
3.95 Tommy Cooper
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1921-1984
Just like that!
Title of autobiography (1975), from his catch-phrase.
I used to think all poets were Byronic--
Mad, bad and dangerous to know.
And then I met a few. Yes it's ironic--
I used to think all poets were Byronic.
They're mostly wicked as a ginless tonic
And wild as pension plans.
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986) "Triolet." Cf. Oxford Dictonary of
Quotations (1979) 306:25
It's nice to meet serious people
And hear them explain their views:
Your concern for the rights of women
Is especially welcome news.
I'm sure you'd never exploit one;
I expect you'd rather be dead;
I'm thoroughly convinced of it--
Now can we go to bed?
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986) "From June to December"
There are so many kinds of awful men--
One can't avoid them all. She often said
She'd never make the same mistake again:
She always made a new mistake instead.
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986) "Rondeau Redoubl‚"
It was a dream I had last week
And some kind of record seemed vital.
I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
But I love the title.
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986) title-poem
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a
meaning to music?" My answer to that would be, "Yes." And "Can you state
in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No."
What to Listen for in Music (1939) ch. 2
3.98 Bernard Cornfeld
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1927-
Do you sincerely want to be rich?
Question often asked by Cornfeld of salesmen in the 1960s, in Charles Raw
et al. Do You Sincerely Want to be Rich? (1971) p. 67
Whoso maintains that I am humbled now
(Who wait the Awful Day) is still a liar;
I hope to meet my Maker brow to brow
And find my own the higher.
Collected Poems (1954) "Epitaph for a Reviewer"
A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life.
Poems (1910) "Youth"
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
Poems (1910) "To a Fat Lady seen from the Train." Cf. G. K. Chesterton
51:8
How long ago Hector took off his plume,
Not wanting that his little son should cry,
Then kissed his sad Andromache goodbye--
And now we three in Euston waiting-room.
Travelling Home (1948) "Parting in Wartime"
3.100 Francis Macdonald Cornford
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1943
If you persist to the threshold of old age--your fiftieth year, let us
say--you will be a powerful person yourself, with an accretion of
peculiarities which other people will have to study in order to square
you. The toes you will have trodden on by this time will be as sands on
the sea-shore; and from far below you will mount the roar of a ruthless
multitude of young men in a hurry. You may perhaps grow to be aware what
they are in a hurry to do. They are in a hurry to get you out of the way.
Microcosmographia Academica (1908) p. 2
Every public action, which is not customary, either is wrong, or, if it is
right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be
done for the first time.
Microcosmographia Academica (1908) p. 28
3.101 Baron Pierre de Coubertin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1863-1937
L'important dans la vie ce n'est point le triomphe mais le combat;
l'essentiel ce n'est pas d'avoir vaincu mais de s'€tre bien battu.
The important thing in life is not the victory but the contest; the
essential thing is not to have won but to be well beaten.
Speech at government banquet in London, 24 July 1908, in T. A. Cook Fourth
Olympiad (1909) p. 793
Tous les jours, … tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.
Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.
De la suggestion et de ses applications (On Suggestion and its
Applications, 1915) p. 17 (Cou‚ advised his patients to repeat this phrase
15 to 20 times, morning and evening)
Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange
Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let's drink to the hope that one day
this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and
greatness and peace again.
Cavalcade (1932) act 3
Dance, dance, dance, little lady!
Dance, dance, dance, little lady!
Leave tomorrow behind.
Dance, Little Lady (1928 song)
Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When our Victory is ultimately won.
Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans (1943 song)
I believe that since my life began
The most I've had is just
A talent to amuse.
Heigho, if love were all!
If Love Were All (1929 song)
I'll see you again,
Whenever Spring breaks through again.
I'll See You Again (1929 song)
Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?)
Letter to T. E. Lawrence, 25 Aug. 1930, in D. Garnett (ed.) Letters of T.
E. Lawrence (1938) p. 696
London Pride has been handed down to us.
London Pride is a flower that's free.
London Pride means our own dear town to us,
And our pride it for ever will be.
London Pride (1941 song)
Mad about the boy,
It's pretty funny but I'm mad about the boy.
He has a gay appeal
That makes me feel
There may be something sad about the boy.
Mad about the Boy (1932 song)
Mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to,
The Chinese wouldn't dare to,
The Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta.
In the Philippines, there are lovely screens
To protect you from the glare;
In the Malay states, they have hats like plates
Which the Britishers won't wear.
At twelve noon, the natives swoon,
And no further work is done;
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1931 song)
Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,
Don't put your daughter on the stage.
Mrs Worthington (1935 song)
Poor little rich girl
You're a bewitched girl,
Better beware!
Poor Little Rich Girl (1925 song)
Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
Private Lives (1930) act 1 (in a gramophone recording also made in 1930,
Gertrude Lawrence spoke the line as "Strange how potent cheap music is")
Amanda: I've been brought up to believe that it's beyond the pale, for
a man to strike a woman.
Elyot: A very poor tradition. Certain women should be struck regularly,
like gongs.
Private Lives (1930) act 3
Someday I'll find you,
Moonlight behind you,
True to the dream I am dreaming.
Someday I'll Find You (1930 song)
Dear Mrs A.,
Hooray, hooray,
At last you are deflowered.
On this as every other day
I love you--Noel Coward.
Telegram to Gertrude Lawrence, 5 July 1940 (the day after her wedding), in
Gertrude Lawrence A Star Danced (1945) p. 201
The Stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand;
Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt
And frequently mortgaged to the hilt
Is inclined to take the gilt
Off the gingerbread,
And certainly damps the fun
Of the eldest son.
The Stately Homes of England (1938 song). Cf. Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (1979) 244:21
Tho' the pipes that supply the bathroom burst
And the lavatory makes you fear the worst,
It was used by Charles the First
Quite informally,
And later by George the Fourth
On a journey North.
The Stately Homes of England (1938 song)
The Stately Homes of England,
Tho' rather in the lurch,
Provide a lot of chances
For Psychical Research--
There's the ghost of a crazy younger son
Who murdered, in thirteen fifty-one,
An extremely rowdy Nun
Who resented it,
And people who come to call
Meet her in the hall.
The Stately Homes of England (1938 song)
Cowslip and shad-blow, flaked like tethered foam
Around bared teeth of stallions, bloomed that spring
When first I read thy lines, rife as the loam
Of prairies, yet like breakers cliffward leaping!
...My hand
in yours,
Walt Whitman--
so--
The Bridge (1930) pt. 4
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
Dial June 1927, p. 490 "To Brooklyn Bridge"
You who desired so much--in vain to ask--
Yet fed your hunger like an endless task,
Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest--
Achieved that stillness ultimately best,
Being, of all, least sought for: Emily, hear!
Nation 29 June 1927, p. 718 "To Emily Dickinson"
3.105 James Creelman and Ruth Rose
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
James Creelman 1901-1941
Oh no, it wasn't the aeroplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.
King Kong (1933 film; final words)
The only safe pleasure for a parliamentarian is a bag of boiled sweets.
Listener 10 June 1982
She [Margaret Thatcher] has been beastly to the Bank of England, has
demanded that the BBC "set its house in order" and tends to believe the
worst of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She cannot see an
institution without hitting it with her handbag.
The Times 21 June 1982
"If anyone trith to hang me," said Violet Elizabeth complacently, "I'll
thcream and thcream and thcream till I'm thick. I can."
Still--William (1925) ch. 8
Half joking, he [Crosby] asked that his epitaph read, "He was an average
guy who could carry a tune."
Newsweek 24 Oct. 1977, p. 102
3.111 Bing Crosby, Roy Turk, and Fred Ahlert
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bing Crosby 1903-1977
Roy Turk 1892-1934
Fred Ahlert 1892-1933
Where the blue of the night
Meets the gold of the day,
Someone waits for me.
Where the Blue of the Night (1931 song)
3.112 Richard Crossman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-1974
The Civil Service is profoundly deferential--"Yes, Minister! No, Minister!
If you wish it, Minister!"
Diary, 22 Oct. 1964, in Diaries of a Cabinet Minister (1975) vol. 1, p. 21
Come on down!
Catch-phrase in "The Price is Right," ITV programme, 1984 onwards.
3.115 Robert Crumb
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1943-
Keep on truckin'.
Catch-phrase used in cartoons from circa 1972
3.116 Bruce Frederick Cummings
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See W. N. P. Barbellion (2.14)
3.117 e. e. cummings
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1962
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
50 Poems (1949) no. 29
Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink.
XLI Poems (1925) "La Guerre," no. 2
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims" and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voices of liberty be mute?
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.
is 5 (1926) p. 62
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons-
justlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death.
Tulips and Chimneys (1923) "Portraits" no. 8
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.
Tulips and Chimneys (1923) "Sonnets-Realities" no. 1
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all noses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
W (1931) "somewhere I have never travelled"
a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man.
1 x 1 (1944) no. 10
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease.
1 x 1 (1944) no. 14
We doctors know
a hopeless case if--listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go.
1 x 1 (1944) no. 14
3.118 William Thomas Cummings
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1903-1945
There are no atheists in the foxholes.
In Carlos P. Romulo I Saw the Fall of the Philippines (1943) ch. 15
3.119 Will Cuppy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1884-1949
The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole
purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for.
How to Become Extinct (1941) p. 163
Good Christian people who wouldn't dream of misbehaving will not catch
Aids. My message to the businessmen of this country when they go abroad
on business is that there is one thing above all they can take with them
to stop them catching Aids--and that is the wife.
Speech at Runcorn, 12 Feb. 1987, in Guardian 13 Feb. 1987
We have problems here of high smoking and alcoholism. Some of these
problems are things we can tackle by impressing on people the need to look
after themselves better. That is something which is taken more seriously
down South....I honestly don't think the problem has anything to do with
poverty....The problem very often for people is, I think, just ignorance
and failing to realise that they do have some control over their lives.
Speech at Newcastle upon Tyne, 23 Sept. 1986, in Guardian 24 Sept. 1986
3.121 Michael Curtiz
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1962
Bring on the empty horses!
In David Niven Bring on the Empty Horses (1975) ch. 6 (said while Curtiz
was directing the 1936 film, The Charge of the Light Brigade)
3.122 Lord Curzon (George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1925
Not even a public figure. A man of no experience. And of the utmost
insignificance.
In Harold Nicolson Curzon: the Last Phase (1934) ch. 12 (said of Stanley
Baldwin on his being appointed Prime Minister in 1923)
The Domestic Bursar of Balliol (according to his own story) sent Curzon
a specimen menu [for a luncheon for Queen Mary in 1921], beginning with
soup. The menu came back with one sentence written across the corner in
Curzon's large and old-fashioned hand: "Gentlemen do not take soup at
luncheon."
E. L. Woodward Short Journey (1942) ch. 7
Dear me, I never knew that the lower classes had such white skins.
In K. Rose Superior Person (1969) ch. 12 (words supposedly said by Curzon
when watching troops bathing during the First World War)
4.0 D
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4.1 Paul Daniels
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1938-
You're going to like this...not a lot...but you'll like it!
Catch-phrase used in his conjuring act, especially on television from 1981
onwards
4.2 Charles Brace Darrow
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1967
Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect њ200.
Instructions on "Community Chest" card in the game "Monopoly," invented by
Darrow in 1931
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I'm
beginning to believe it.
In Irving Stone Clarence Darrow for the Defence (1941) ch. 6
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an
agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure--that
is all that agnosticism means.
Speech at trial of John Thomas Scopes, 15 July 1925, in The World's Most
Famous Court Trial (1925) ch. 4
4.4 Sir Francis Darwin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1848-1925
In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the
man to whom the idea first occurs.
Eugenics Review Apr. 1914, "Francis Galton"
It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues.
Farewell to Poesy (1910) "Kingfisher"
Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content,
Thou knowest of no strange continent:
Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep
A gentle motion with the deep;
Thou hast not sailed in Indian Seas,
Where scent comes forth in every breeze.
Foliage (1913) "Sweet Stay-At-Home"
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Songs of Joy (1911) "Leisure"
4.9 Bette Davis (Ruth Elizabeth Davis)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1989
See Lenore Coffee (3.72), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (13.52), and Olive Higgins
Prouty (16.66)
4.10 Lord Dawson of Penn (Bertrand Edward Dawson, Viscount Dawson of Penn)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1864-1945
The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close.
Bulletin on George V, 20 Jan. 1936, in History Today Dec. 1986, p. 28
4.11 C. Day-Lewis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1904-1972
Do not expect again a phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.
Collected Poems, 1929-33 (1935) "From Feathers to Iron"
Hurry! We burn
For Rome so near us, for the phoenix moment
When we have thrown off this traveller's trance,
And mother-naked and ageless-ancient
Wake in her warm nest of renaissance.
Italian Visit (1953) "Flight to Italy"
Tempt me no more; for I
Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power.
Magnetic Mountain (1933) pt. 3, no. 24
You that love England, who have an ear for her music,
The slow movement of clouds in benediction,
Clear arias of light thrilling over her uplands,
Over the chords of summer sustained peacefully.
Magnetic Mountain (1933) pt. 4, no. 32
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse--
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Word over All (1943) "Where are the War Poets?"
4.12 Simone de Beauvoir
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1986
On ne naЊt pas femme: on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique,
‚conomique ne d‚finit la figure que rev€t au sein de la soci‚t‚ la femelle
humaine.
One is not born a woman: one becomes a woman. No biological, psychological
or economic destiny can determine how the human female will appear in
society.
Le deuxiЉme sexe (The Second Sex, 1949) vol. 2, pt. 1, ch. 1
4.13 Edward de Bono
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1933-
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our
expectations.
In Observer 12 June 1977
4.14 Eugene Victor Debs
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1855-1926
I said then, I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it;
while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in
prison, I am not free.
Speech at trial in Cleveland, Ohio, 14 Sept. 1918, in Liberator Nov. 1918,
p. 12
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved,
as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
Speech at Federal Court, Cleveland, Ohio, 11 Sept. 1918, in Speeches
(1928) p. 66
4.15 Edgar Degas
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1834-1917
L'art, c'est le vice. On ne l'‚pouse pas l‚gitimement, on le viole.
Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.
In Paul Lafond Degas (1918) p. 140
4.16 Charles de Gaulle
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1970
Les trait‚s, voyez-vous, sont comme les jeunes filles et comme les roses:
‡a dure ce que ‡a dure.
Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
Speech at Elys‚e Palace, 2 July 1963, in Andr‚ Passeron De Gaulle parle
1962-6 (1966) p. 340
Vive Le Qu‚bec Libre.
Long Live Free Quebec.
Speech in Montreal, 24 July 1967, in Discours et messages (1970) p. 192
La France a perdu une bataille! Mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre!
France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war!
Proclamation, 18 June 1940, in Discours, messages et d‚clarations du
G‚n‚ral de Gaulle (1941)
Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six
vari‚t‚s de fromage?
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
In Ernest Mignon Les Mots du G‚n‚ral (1962) p. 57
Comme un homme politique ne croit jamais ce qu'il dit, il est tout ‚tonn‚
quand il est cru sur parole.
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to
be taken at his word.
In Ernest Mignon Les Mots du G‚n‚ral (1962) p. 67
I reviewed a book of his after the war. I said, "General de Gaulle is
a very good soldier and a very bad politician." So he wrote back to me and
said, "I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious
a matter to be left to the politicians."
Clement Attlee Prime Minister Remembers (1961) ch. 4
4.17 J. de Knight (James E. Myers) and M. Freedman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
J. de Knight 1919-
M. Freedman 1893-1962
(We're gonna) rock around the clock.
Title of song (1953)
4.18 Walter de la Mare
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1956
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) "All That's Past"
Softly along the road of evening,
In a twilight dim with rose,
Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew,
Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.
The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) "Nod"
He is crazed with the spell of far Arabia,
They have stolen his wits away.
The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) "Arabia"
"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.
The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) "The Listeners"
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) "The Listeners"
Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare--rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?
The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) "Epitaph"
A face peered. All the grey night
In chaos of vacancy shone;
Nought but vast Sorrow was there--
The sweet cheat gone.
Motley and Other Poems (1918) "The Ghost"
Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days.
Motley and Other Poems (1918) "Fare Well"
Ann, Ann!
Come! quick as you can!
There's a fish that talks
In the frying-pan.
Peacock Pie (1913) "Alas, Alack"
Three jolly gentlemen,
In coats of red,
Rode their horses
Up to bed.
Peacock Pie (1913) "The Huntsmen"
It's a very odd thing--
As odd as can be--
That whatever Miss T eats
Turns into Miss T.
Peacock Pie (1913) "Miss T"
Three jolly Farmers
Once bet a pound
Each dance the others would
Off the ground.
Peacock Pie (1913) "Off the Ground"
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon.
Peacock Pie (1913) "Silver"
What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.
Poems (1906) "Napoleon"
Hi! handsome hunting man
Fire your little gun.
Bang! Now the animal
Is dead and dumb and done.
Nevermore to peep again, creep again, leap again,
Eat or sleep or drink again, Oh, what fun!
Poems for Children (1930) "Hi!"
"Holiday tasks always remind me, my dear, of the young lady who wanted
to go out to swim:
Mother may I go out to swim?
Yes, my darling daughter.
Fold your clothes up neat and trim,
And don't go near the water."
"The rhyme I know," said Laetitia, "is, Hang your clothes on a hickory
limb."
"That's all very well," said her uncle, "but just you show me one!"
The Scarecrow (1945) p. 11. Cf. Anonymous 7:25
Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old.
A Taste of Honey (1959) act 1, sc. 2
4.20 Jack Dempsey
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-1983
Honey, I just forgot to duck.
Comment to his wife Estelle after losing his World Heavyweight title,
23 Sept. 1926, in J. and B. P. Dempsey Dempsey (1977) p. 202 (after
someone tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, Reagan told his wife:
"Honey, I forgot to duck")
4.21 Nigel Dennis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-
I am a well-to-do, revered and powerful figure. That Establishment which
we call England has taken me in: I am become her Fortieth Article. I sit
upon her Boards, I dominate her stage, her museums, her dances and her
costumes; I have an honoured voice in her elected House. To her--and her
alone--I bend the knee, and in return for my homage she is gently blind to
my small failings, asking only that I indulge them privately.
Cards of Identity (1955) pt. 2, p. 230
4.22 Buddy De Sylva (George Gard De Sylva) and Lew Brown
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Buddy De Sylva 1895-1950
Lew Brown 1893-1958
The moon belongs to everyone,
The best things in life are free,
The stars belong to everyone,
They gleam there for you and me.
The Best Things in Life are Free (1927 song; music by Ray Henderson)
4.23 Peter De Vries
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-
You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy.
Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we
were guilty of Noel Cowardice?
Comfort me with Apples (1956) ch. 15
It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order
to save us.
Mackerel Plaza (1958) ch. 1
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves
arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that
children produce adults.
Tunnel of Love (1954) ch. 8
4.24 Lord Dewar
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1864-1930
Lord Dewar...made the famous epigram about there being only two classes of
pedestrians in these days of reckless motor traffic--the quick, and the
dead.
George Robey Looking Back on Life (1933) ch. 28
4.25 Sergei Diaghilev
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1929
ђtonne-moi.
Astonish me.
In Journals of Jean Cocteau (1957) ch. 1
4.26 Paul Dickson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1939-
Rowe's Rule: the odds are five to six that the light at the end of the
tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Washingtonian Nov. 1978. Cf. Robert Lowell 139:21
4.27 Joan Didion
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1934-
That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody
out.
Slouching towards Bethlehem (1968) p. xvi
4.28 Howard Dietz
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ars gratia artis.
Art for art's sake.
Motto of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios: see Bosley Crowthier The Lion's
Share (1957) p. 64
4.29 William Dillon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I want a girl (just like the girl that married dear old dad).
Title of song (1911; music by Harry von Tilzer)
4.30 Ernest Dimnet
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but
the most surely, on the soul.
What We Live By (1932) pt. 2, ch. 12
Out of Africa.
English title of her novel Den Afrikanske Farm (1937). Cf. Pliny the
Elder's Historia Naturalis bk. 8, sec. 6: Semper aliquid novi Africam
adferre. Always bringing something new out of Africa.
What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set,
ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of
Shiraz into urine?
Seven Gothic Tales (1934) p. 275
4.32 Mort Dixon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1956
Bye bye blackbird.
Title of song (1926; music by Ray Henderson)
I'm looking over a four leaf clover
That I overlooked before.
I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover (1927 song; music by Harry Woods)
The Party line is that there is no Party line.
Comment on reforms of Yugoslavian Communist Party, Nov. 1952, in Fitzroy
Maclean Disputed Barricade (1957) caption facing p. 416
Fame is a food that dead men eat,--
I have no stomach for such meat.
Century Nov. 1906, "Fame is a Food"
I intended an Ode,
And it turned to a Sonnet.
It began la mode,
I intended an Ode;
But Rose crossed the road
In her latest new bonnet;
I intended an Ode;
And it turned to a Sonnet.
Graphic 23 May 1874, "Rose-Leaves"
The ladies of St James's!
They're painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays for ever,
Their red it never dies:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her colour comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,--
It wavers to a rose.
Harper's Jan. 1883, "Ladies of St James's"
Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
Proverbs in Porcelain (1877) "Paradox of Time"
4.35 Ken Dodd
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1931-
The trouble with [Sigmund] Freud is that he never played the Glasgow
Empire Saturday night.
In The Times 7 Aug. 1965
4.36 J. P. Donleavy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-
But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you
have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about
getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're
frightened of death.
Ginger Man (1955) ch. 5
When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in
all the pubs in Dublin. I wonder would they know it was me?
Ginger Man (1955) ch. 31
4.37 Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1977
Half a million more allotments properly worked will provide potatoes and
vegetables that will feed another million adults and 1-1/2 million
children for eight months out of 12. The matter is not one that can wait.
So--let's get going. Let "Dig for Victory" be the motto of every one with
a garden and of every able-bodied man and woman capable of digging an
allotment in their spare time.
Radio broadcast, 3 Oct. 1939, in The Times 4 Oct. 1939
4.38 Keith Douglas
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1920-1944
And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers
come back, abandoning the expedition;
the specimens, the lilies of ambition
still spring in their climate, still unpicked:
but time, time is all I lacked
to find them, as the great collectors before me.
Alamein to Zem Zem (1946) "On Return from Egypt, 1943-4"
Remember me when I am dead
And simplify me when I'm dead.
Collected Poems (1966) "Simplify me when I'm Dead" (1941)
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.
For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death, who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.
Collected Poems (1966) "Vergissmeinnicht, 1943"
If at times my eyes are lenses
through which the brain explores
constellations of feeling
my ears yielding like swinging doors
admit princes to the corridors
into the mind, do not envy me.
I have a beast on my back.
Collected Poems (1966) "B€te Noire" (1944)
4.39 Norman Douglas
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1952
To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him--two.
Almanac (1941) p. 77
The bishop was feeling rather sea-sick. Confoundedly sea-sick, in fact.
South Wind (1917) ch. 1
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
South Wind (1917) ch. 6
Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened
a tavern for his friends.
South Wind (1917) ch. 20
4.40 Sir Alec Douglas-Home
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
He [Lord Home] is used to dealing with estate workers. I cannot see how
anyone can say he is out of touch.
Comment on her father becoming Prime Minister, in Daily Herald 21 Oct.
1963
4.42 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1930
To Sherlock Holmes she [Irene Adler] is always the woman. I have seldom
heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
predominates the whole of her sex.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Scandal in Bohemia"
You see, but you do not observe.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Scandal in Bohemia"
It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for
fifty minutes.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Red-Headed League"
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely
the most important.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Case of Identity"
The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Case of Identity"
Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and
commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Boscombe Valley Mystery"
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture
that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room
of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Five Orange Pips"
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and
vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than
does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) "Copper Beeches"
Matilda Briggs...was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of
Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) "Sussex Vampire"
But here, unless I am mistaken, is our client.
His Last Bow (1917) "Wisteria Lodge"
All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience.
His Last Bow (1917) "Bruce-Partington Plans"
"I [Sherlock Holmes] followed you." "I saw no one." "That is what you may
expect to see when I follow you."
His Last Bow (1917) "Devil's Foot"
Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age.
His Last Bow (1917) title story
They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!
Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) ch. 2
A long shot, Watson; a very long shot!
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) "Silver Blaze"
"Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) "Silver Blaze"
"Excellent," I [Dr Watson] cried. "Elementary," said he [Sherlock
Holmes].
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) "The Crooked Man" ("Elementary" is
often expanded into "Elementary, my dear Watson" but the longer phrase is
not found in any book by Conan Doyle, although a review of the film The
Return of Sherlock Holmes in New York Times 19 Oct. 1929, p. 22, says: In
the final scene Dr Watson is there with his "Amazing Holmes," and Holmes
comes forth with his "Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.")
Ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity...is the Napoleon of
crime, Watson.
Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) "The Final Problem"
You mentioned your name as if I should recognise it, but I assure you
that, beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a
Freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.
Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) "The Norwood Builder"
Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department.
Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) "The Second Stain"
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in
the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with
romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a
love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.
Sign of Four (1890) ch. 1
Yes, I have been guilty of several monographs....Here...is one "Upon the
Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos." In it I enumerate
a hundred and forty forms of cigar, cigarette and pipe tobacco.
Sign of Four (1890) ch. 1
In an experience of women that extends over many nations and three
separate continents, I have never looked upon a face which gave a clearer
promise of a refined and sensitive nature.
Sign of Four (1890) ch. 2
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Sign of Four (1890) ch. 6
You know my methods. Apply them.
Sign of Four (1890) ch. 6
"It is the unofficial force--the Baker Street irregulars." As he spoke,
there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the stairs, a clatter of
high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and ragged little street Arabs.
Sign of Four (1890) ch. 8
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the
Empire are irresistibly drained.
Study in Scarlet (1888) ch. 1
It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It
biases the judgement.
Study in Scarlet (1888) ch. 3
Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
Study in Scarlet (1888) ch. 5
It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most
commonplace crime is often the most mysterious, because it presents no new
or special features from which deductions may be drawn.
Study in Scarlet (1888) ch. 7
"I am inclined to think--" said I [Dr Watson]. "I should do so," Sherlock
Holmes remarked, impatiently.
Valley of Fear (1915) ch. 1
The vocabulary of "Bradshaw" is nervous and terse, but limited. The
selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general
messages.
Valley of Fear (1915) ch. 1
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly
recognizes genius.
Valley of Fear (1915) ch. 1
What of the bow?
The bow was made in England,
Of true wood, of yew wood,
The wood of English bows.
White Company (1891) "Song of the Bow"
4.43 Maurice Drake
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Beanz meanz Heinz.
Advertising slogan for Heinz baked beans circa 1967, in Nigel Rees Slogans
(1982) p. 131
4.44 William A. Drake
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1899-
See Greta Garbo (7.8)
4.45 John Drinkwater
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1937
In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.
Tides (1917) "Moonlit Apples"
4.46 Alexander Dubcek
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1921-
Proto vedenЎ strany klade takov° duraz na to, aby...nase zeme hospod rsky
a kulturne nezaost vala a hlavne abychom ve sluzb ch lidu delali takovou
politiku, aby socialismus neztr cel svou lidskou tv r.
That is why the leadership of the country has put such emphasis on
ensuring that...our land did not lag behind economically or culturally,
and, most important, why in the service of the people we followed a policy
so that socialism would not lose its human face.
In Rud‚ Pr vo19 July 1968
4.47 Al Dubin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1945
Tiptoe through the tulips.
Title of song (1929; music by Joseph Burke)
4.48 W. E. B. DuBois
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1963
One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human
beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.
The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the
great end comes slowly, because time is long.
Last message (written 26 June, 1957) read at his funeral, 1963, in Journal
of Negro History Apr. 1964
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour
line--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and
Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.
Souls of Black Folk (1903) ch. 2
4.49 Georges Duhamel
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1884-1966
Je respecte trop l' id‚e de Dieu pour la rendre responsable d'un monde
aussi absurde.
I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for
such an absurd world.
Le d‚sert de BiЉvres (1937) in Chronique des Pasquier (1948) vol. 5,
p. 249
4.50 Raoul Duke
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See Hunter S. Thompson (20.17)
4.51 John Foster Dulles
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1959
You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war.
Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were
brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without
getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you
inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared
to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the
face--on the question of enlarging the Korean war, on the question of
getting into the Indochina war, on the question of Formosa. We walked to
the brink and we looked it in the face.
In Life 16 Jan. 1956
If...the European Defence Community should not become effective; if France
and Germany remain apart....That would compel an agonizing reappraisal of
basic United States policy.
Speech to NATO Council in Paris, 14 Dec. 1953, in New York Times 15 Dec.
1953, p. 14
4.52 Dame Daphne du Maurier
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1907-1989
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Rebecca (1938) ch. 1 (opening sentence)
Farewell, my friends. I am going to glory.
Last words before her scarf caught in a car wheel and broke her neck, in
Mary Desti Isadora Duncan's End (1929) ch. 25
4.54 Ian Dunlop
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The shock of the new: seven historic exhibitions of modern art.
Title of book (1972)
4.55 Jimmy Durante
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1893-1980
Everybody wants to get inta the act!
Catch-phrase, in W. Cahn Good Night, Mrs Calabash (1963) p. 95
4.56 Leo Durocher
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1906-
I called off his players' names as they came marching up the steps behind
him, "Walker, Cooper, Mize, Marshall, Kerr, Gordon, Thomson. Take a look
at them. All nice guys. They'll finish last. Nice guys. Finish last."
Said on 6 July 1946, in Nice Guys Finish Last (1975) pt. 1, p. 14
(generally quoted as "Nice guys finish last")
4.57 Ian Dury
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Title of song (1977; music by Chaz Jankel)
I could be the catalyst that sparks the revolution.
I could be an inmate in a long term institution
I could lean to wild extremes I could do or die,
I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch them gallop by,
What a waste, what a waste, what a waste, what a waste.
What a Waste (1978 song; music by Chaz Jankel)
4.58 Lillian K. Dykstra
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
He [Thomas Dewey] is just about the nastiest little man I've ever known.
He struts sitting down.
Letter to Franz Dykstra, 8 July 1952, in James T. Patterson Mr Republican
(1972) ch. 35
4.59 Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1941-
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you can call him a man?...
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Blowin' in the Wind (1962 song)
Don't think twice, it's all right.
Title of song (1963)
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords, in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a gonna fall.
A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall (1963 song)
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
It's Alright, Ma (1965 song)
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
Like a Rolling Stone (1965 song)
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.
Love Minus Zero/ No Limit (1965 song)
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more.
Maggie's Farm (1965 song)
Hey! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Mr Tambourine Man (1965 song)
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
My Back Pages (1964 song)
Don't follow leaders
Watch the parkin' meters.
Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965 song)
Come mothers and fathers,
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'!
The Times They Are A-Changing (1964 song)
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide,
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
With God on our Side (1963 song)
5.0 E
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
5.1 Stephen T. Early
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1951
I received a card the other day from Steve Early which said, "Don't Worry
Me--I am an 8 Ulcer Man on 4 Ulcer Pay."
William Hillman Mr President; the First Publication from the Personal
Diaries, Private Letters, Papers and Revealing Interviews of Harry S.
Truman (1952) pt. 5, p. 222
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives.
Speech in London, 16 Dec. 1970, in The Times 17 Dec. 1970
5.4 Sir Anthony Eden (Earl of Avon)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1897-1977
We are in an armed conflict; that is the phrase I have used. There has
been no declaration of war.
Hansard 1 Nov. 1956, col. 1641
5.5 Clarissa Eden (Countess of Avon)
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1920-
For the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing
through my drawing room.
Speech at Gateshead, 20 Nov. 1956, in Gateshead Post 23 Nov. 1956
5.6 Marriott Edgar
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1880-1951
There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.
A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle,
The finest that Woolworth's could sell.
They didn't think much to the Ocean:
The waves, they were fiddlin' and small,
There was no wrecks and nobody drownded,
Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.
The Lion and Albert (1932) in Albert, 'Arold and Others (1937)--monologue
recorded by Stanley Holloway in 1932
The Magistrate gave his opinion
That no one was really to blame
And he said that he hoped the Ramsbottoms
Would have further sons to their name.
At that Mother got proper blazing,
"And thank you, sir, kindly," said she.
"What, waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!"
The Lion and Albert (1932) in Albert, 'Arold and Others (1937)
5.7 Duke of Edinburgh
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1921-
See Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (16.34)
5.8 Thomas Alva Edison
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1847-1931
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Harper's Monthly Magazine Sept. 1932 (quoted by M. A. Rosanoff as having
been said by Edison circa 1903)
5.9 John Maxwell Edmonds
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1958
When you go home, tell them of us and say,
"For your tomorrows these gave their today."
Inscriptions Suggested for War Memorials (1919)
5.10 King Edward VII
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1841-1910
That's the fourth time that infernal noise has roused me.
Said to his secretary "Fritz" Ponsonby at the first performance of "The
Wreckers," an opera by Dame Ethel Smyth, quoted in H. Atkins and A. Newman
Beecham Stories (1978) p. 43
I thought everyone must know that a short jacket is always worn with
a silk hat at a private view in the morning.
In Sir P. Magnus Edward VII (1964) ch. 19 (said to Sir Frederick Ponsonby,
who had proposed to accompany him in a tail-coat)
Because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own,
there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute.
Letter to Lord Granville, 30 Nov. 1875, in Sir Sydney Lee King Edward VII
(1925) vol. 1, ch. 21
5.11 King Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1972
The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey
their children.
Look 5 Mar. 1957
At long last I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted
to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally
possible for me to speak. A few hours ago I discharged my last duty as
King and Emperor, and now that I have been succeeded by my brother, the
Duke of York, my first words must be to declare allegiance to him. This
I do with all my heart.
You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the throne.
But I want you to understand that in making up my mind I did not forget
the country or the Empire which as Prince of Wales, and lately as King,
I have for twenty-five years tried to serve. But you must believe me when
I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of
responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do
without the help and support of the woman I love....
This decision has been made less difficult to me by the sure knowledge
that my brother, with his long training in the public affairs of this
country and with his fine qualities, will be able to take my place
forthwith, without interruption or injury to the life and progress of the
Empire. And he has one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you and
not bestowed on me--a happy home with his wife and children....
I now quit altogether public affairs, and I lay down my burden....God
bless you all. God save the King.
Broadcast, 11 Dec. 1936, in The Times 12 Dec. 1936
These works [the derelict Dowlais Iron and Steel Works] brought all these
people here. Something should be done to get them at work again.
Spoken to Charles Keen, 18 Nov. 1936, in Western Mail 19 Nov. 1936
5.12 John Ehrlichman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1925-
I think we ought to let him [Patrick Gray] hang there. Let him twist
slowly, slowly in the wind.
Telephone conversation with John Dean, 7 or 8 Mar. 1973, in Washington
Post 27 July 1973, p. A27 (regarding Patrick Gray's nomination as Director
of the FBI)
5.13 Albert Einstein
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1955
Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
In Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman Albert Einstein, the Human Side (1979)
p. 38
I am an absolute pacifist....It is an instinctive feeling. It is a feeling
that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.
Interview with Paul Hutchinson, in Christian Century 28 Aug. 1929
Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.
God is subtle but he is not malicious.
Remark made during a week at Princeton beginning 9 May 1921, later carved
above the fireplace of the Common Room of Fine Hall (the Mathematical
Institute), Princeton University - in R. W. Clark Einstein (1973) ch. 14
Jedenfalls bin ich Ѓberzeugt, dass der nicht wЃrfelt.
At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
Letter to Max Born, 4 Dec. 1926, in Einstein und Born Briefwechsel (1969)
p. 130 (often quoted as Gott wЃrfelt nicht God does not play dice, e.g. in
B. Hoffmann Albert Einstein (1973) ch. 10)
If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as
a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should
my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany
will declare that I am a Jew.
Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, ?early Dec. 1929, in New York Times
16 Feb. 1930
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of
thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
Telegram sent to prominent Americans, 24 May 1946, in New York Times
25 May 1946
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is
play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
In Observer 15 Jan. 1950
If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living,
I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would
rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest
degree of independence still available under present circumstances.
Reporter 18 Nov. 1954
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium (1941) ch. 13
5.14 Dwight D. Eisenhower
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1969
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American experience....We recognize the imperative
need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave
implications....In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.
Farewell broadcast, 17 Jan. 1961, in New York Times 18 Jan. 1961
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius
of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Speech in Washington, 16 Apr. 1953, in Public Papers of Presidents 1953
(1960) p. 182
You have broader considerations that might follow what you might call the
"falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock
over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will
go over very quickly. So you have the beginning of a disintegration that
would have the most profound influences.
Speech at press conference, 7 Apr. 1954, in Public Papers of Presidents
1954 (1960) p. 383
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments
had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Broadcast discussion, 31 Aug. 1959, in Public Papers of Presidents 1959
(1960) p. 625
5.15 T. S. Eliot
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1965
Where are the eagles and the trumpets?
Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s.
Ara Vus Prec (1920) "Cooking Egg"
Here I am, an old man in a dry month
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
Ara Vus Prec (1920) "Gerontion"
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.
Ara Vus Prec (1920) "Gerontion"
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
Ara Vus Prec (1920) "Gerontion"
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
Ariel Poems (1927) "Journey of the Magi"
But set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Ariel Poems (1927) "Journey of the Magi"
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn.
Ash-Wednesday (1930) pt. 1
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Ash-Wednesday (1930) pt. 1
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day.
Ash-Wednesday (1930) pt. 2
You've missed the point completely, Julia:
There were no tigers. That was the point.
Cocktail Party (1950) act 1, sc. 1
What is hell?
Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
Cocktail Party (1950) act 1, sc. 3
How unpleasant to meet Mr Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
Collected Poems (1936) "Five-Finger Exercises"
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
Collected Poems (1936) "Burnt Norton" pt. 1
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
Collected Poems (1936) "Burnt Norton" pt. 1
Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Collected Poems (1936) "Burnt Norton" pt. 1.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
Collected Poems (1936) "Burnt Norton" pt. 2
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
Collected Poems (1936) "Burnt Norton" pt. 5
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god--sullen, untamed and intractable.
Dry Salvages (1941) pt. 1
In my beginning is my end.
East Coker (1940) pt. 1
That was a way of putting it--not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
East Coker (1940) pt. 2
The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.
East Coker (1940) pt. 2
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant.
East Coker (1940) pt. 3
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
East Coker (1940) pt. 4
Each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.
East Coker (1940) pt. 5
Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
Family Reunion (1939) pt. 2, sc. 3
Agatha! Mary! come!
The clock has stopped in the dark!
Family Reunion (1939) pt. 2, sc. 3
Round and round the circle
Completing the charm
So the knot be unknotted
The cross be uncrossed
The crooked be made straight
And the curse be ended.
Family Reunion (1939) pt. 2, sc. 3
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 1
Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house--
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 2
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 2
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 5
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 5
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 5
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Little Gidding (1942) pt. 5
Yet we have gone on living,
Living and partly living.
Murder in the Cathedral (1935) pt. 1
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
Murder in the Cathedral (1935) pt. 1
Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take the stone from stone,
take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from bone, and wash them.
Murder in the Cathedral (1935) pt. 2
Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth
living.
Notes Towards a Definition of Culture (1948) ch. 1
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place--MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) "Macavity: the Mystery Cat."
Cf. Conan Doyle 69:16
The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.
Poems (1919) "Sweeney among the Nightingales"
The hippopotamus's day
Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way--
The Church can feed and sleep at once.
Poems (1919) "The Hippopotamus"
Polyphiloprogenitive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across window-panes
In the beginning was the Word.
Poems (1919) "Mr Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures underground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Poems (1919) "Whispers of Immortality"
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
Poems (1919) "Whispers of Immortality"
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Poems 1909-1925 (1925) "The Hollow Men"
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.
Poems 1909-1925 (1925) "The Hollow Men"
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Poems 1909-1925 (1925) "The Hollow Men"
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes.
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes.
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
Prufrock (1917) "Preludes"
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Prufrock (1917) "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
Prufrock (1917) "Morning at the Window"
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair--
Lean on a garden urn--
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
Prufrock (1917) "La Figlia Che Piange"
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.
Prufrock (1917) "La Figlia Che Piange"
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The Rock (1934) pt. 1
And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."
The Rock (1934) pt. 1
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it
is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But,
of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means
to want to escape from these things.
Sacred Wood (1920) "Tradition and Individual Talent"
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an
"objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation,
a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion;
such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory
experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.
Sacred Wood (1920) "Hamlet and his Problems"
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I've been born, and once is enough.
Sweeney Agonistes (1932) p. 24
In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from
which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was
due to the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton
and Dryden.
Times Literary Supplement 20 Oct. 1921
We can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as
it exists at present, must be difficult.
Times Literary Supplement 20 Oct. 1921
Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses' heels
Over the paving.
Triumphal March (1931)
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 1
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 1
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 1. Cf. Joseph Conrad 60:4
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 1
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 1
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 2 (cf. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra act 2,
sc. 2, l. 199)
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 2
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 2
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--
It's so elegant
So intelligent.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 2. Cf. Gene Buck and Herman Ruby
Hurry up please it's time.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 2
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 3. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979)
332:19
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I, Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 3
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest--
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 3
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 3
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 4
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 5
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 5
These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
Waste Land (1922) pt. 5
5.16 Queen Elizabeth II
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1926-
I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short,
shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial
family to which we all belong.
Broadcast speech (as Princess Elizabeth) to the Commonwealth from Cape
Town, 21 Apr. 1947, in The Times 22 Apr. 1947
I think everybody really will concede that on this, of all days, I should
begin my speech with the words "My husband and I."
Speech at Guildhall on her 25th wedding anniversary, 20 Nov. 1972, in The
Times 21 Nov. 1972
5.17 Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
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1900-
I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in
the face.
Said to a policeman, 13 Sept. 1940, in John Wheeler-Bennett King George VI
(1958) pt. 3, ch. 6
It is certainly strange to observe...how many people seem to feel vain of
their own unqualified optimism when the place where optimism most
flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
Dance of Life (1923) ch. 3
The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy
it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our
sense of hearing. As usual, what we call "Progress" is the exchange of
one Nuisance for another Nuisance.
Impressions and Comments (1914) 31 July 1912
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
New Spirit (1890) "Tolstoi"
5.20 Paul Eluard
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1895-1952
Adieu tristesse
Bonjour tristesse
Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond.
Farewell sadness
Good-day sadness
You are inscribed in the lines of the ceiling.
La vie imm‚diate (1930) "A peine d‚figur‚e," in ™uvres complЉtes (1968)
vol. 1, p. 365
5.21 Sir William Empson
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1906-1984
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
It is not the effort nor the failure tires.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
Poems (1935) "Missing Dates"
Seven types of ambiguity.
Title of book (1930)
5.22 Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch
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Julius J. Epstein 1909-
Philip G. Epstein 1909-1952
Howard Koch 1902-
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into
mine.
Casablanca (1942 film), words spoken by Humphrey Bogart
If she can stand it, I can. Play it!
Casablanca (1942 film), words spoken by Humphrey Bogart, often misquoted
as "Play it again, Sam" (earlier in the film, Ingrid Bergman says: "Play
it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By .")
Here's looking at you, kid.
Casablanca (1942 film), words spoken by Humphrey Bogart
Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.
Casablanca (1942 film), words spoken by Claude Rains
5.23 Susan Ertz
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1894-1985
Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millions long for
immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday
afternoon.
Anger in the Sky (1943) p. 137
Mr Dudley Erwin, former Air Minister [in Australia], claimed last night
that the secretary of Mr John Gorton, the Prime Minster, had cost him his
job in the reshuffled Government announced earlier this week. At first Mr
Erwin said he was dropped because of a "political manoeuvre." Later, when
asked to explain what this meant, he said: "It wiggles, it's shapely and
its name is Ainsley Gotto."
The Times 14 Nov. 1969
5.25 Howard Estabrook and Harry Behn
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Excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable.
Hell's Angels (1930 film), words spoken by Jean Harlow
Miss Twye was soaping her breasts in the bath
When she heard behind her a meaning laugh
And to her amazement she discovered
A wicked man in the bathroom cupboard.
Poems and Songs (1939) "Miss Twye"
5.27 William Norman Ewer
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1885-1976
I gave my life for freedom--This I know:
For those who bade me fight had told me so.
Five Souls and Other Verses (1917) "Five Souls"
How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews.
In Week-End Book (1924) p. 117 (for the reply, see Cecil Browne)
6.0 F
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Provided it be well and truly made there is really for the confirmed
turophile no such thing as a bad cheese. A cheese may disappoint. It may
be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains
cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.
Any Number Can Play (1957) p. 105
On November 17...I encountered the mama of dada [Gertrude Stein] again
(something called Portraits and Prayers) and as usual withdrew worsted.
Party of One (1955) p. 90
Morning has broken
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
Fresh from the Lord!
Children's Bells (1957) "A Morning Song (for the First Day of Spring)"
King's Cross!
What shall we do?
His Purple Robe
Is rent in two!
Out of his Crown
He's torn the gems!
He's thrown his Sceptre
Into the Thames!
The Court is shaking
In its shoe--
King's Cross!
What shall we do?
Leave him alone
For a minute or two.
Nursery Rhymes of London Town (1916) "King's Cross"
6.3 King Farouk of Egypt
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1920-1965
The whole world is in revolt. Soon there will be only five Kings left--the
King of England, the King of Spades, the King of Clubs, the King of Hearts
and the King of Diamonds.
Said to Lord Boyd-Orr at a conference in Cairo, 1948, in Lord Boyd-Orr As
I Recall (1966) ch. 21
6.4 William Faulkner
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1897-1962
The long summer.
The Hamlet (1940), title of bk. 3. Cf. Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely
ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he
must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the
board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book
written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode
on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.
In Paris Review Spring 1956, p. 30
He [the writer] must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be
afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in
his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart,
the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and
doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.
Nobel Prize speech, 1950, in Les Prix Nobel en 1950 (1951) p. 71
I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail. He is immortal,
not because he, alone among creatures, has an inexhaustible voice but
because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and
endurance.
Nobel Prize speech, 1950, in Les Prix Nobel en 1950 (1951) p. 71
There is no such thing...as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be
better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty;
then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.
In James M. Webb and A. Wigfall Green William Faulkner of Oxford (1965)
p. 110
6.5 George Fearon
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1901-1972
In my capacity as Press Representative for the English Stage Company I had
read John Osborne's play [Look Back in Anger]. When I met the author
I ventured to prophesy that his generation would praise his play while
mine would, in general, dislike it. I then told him jokingly that Sloane
Square might well become a bloody battleground. "If this happens," I told
him, "you would become known as the Angry Young Man." In fact, we decided
then and there that henceforth he was to be known as that.
Daily Telegraph 2 Oct. 1957
6.6 James Fenton
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1949-
It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer
exist.
German Requiem (1981) p. 1
Enid and I visited her just before the end to be greeted by her with
smiling affection. She tired quickly and gently sent us away by murmuring,
"Now I'll have eine kleine Pause." Those were the last words we heard her
utter.
Gerald Moore Am I Too Loud? (1962) ch. 19
6.9 Eric Field
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Towards the end of July 1914, I...received a surprise call from Colonel
Strachey, the A.A.G. (Recruiting). He swore me to secrecy, told me that
war was imminent and that the moment it broke out we should have to start
advertising at once....That night I worked out a draft schedule and wrote
an advertisement headed "Your King and Country need you" with the
inevitable Coat of Arms at the top.
Advertising (1959) ch. 2
The minute you walked in the joint,
I could see you were a man of distinction,
A real big spender.
Good looking, so refined,
Say, wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind?
So let me get right to the point.
I don't pop my cork for every guy I see.
Hey! big spender, spend a little time with me.
Big Spender (1966 song; music by Cy Coleman)
A fine romance with no kisses.
A fine romance, my friend, this is.
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes,
But you're as cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes.
A Fine Romance (1936 song; music by Jerome Kern)
I can't give you anything but love (baby).
Title of song (1928; music by Jimmy McHugh)
Grab your coat, and get your hat,
Leave your worry on the doorstep,
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side of the street.
On the Sunny Side of the Street (1930 song; music by Jimmy McHugh)
6.12 W. C. Fields (William Claude Dukenfield)
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1880-1946
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939 film), in William K. Everson Art of
W. C. Fields (1968) p. 167
Never give a sucker an even break.
In Collier's 28 Nov. 1925. It was W. C. Fields's catch-phrase, and he is
said to have used it in the musical comedy Poppy (1923), although it does
not occur in the libretto. It was used as the title of a W. C. Fields film
in 1941.
Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.
In Richard J. Anobile Godfrey Daniels (1975) p. 6
I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink.
That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for.
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941 film), in Richard J. Anobile
Flask of Fields (1972) p. 219
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake--which
I also keep handy.
In Corey Ford Time of Laughter (1970) p. 182
Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.
Suggested epitaph for himself, in Vanity Fair June 1925
Fifteen years ago, I made the line "It ain't a fit night out for man or
beast" a by-word by using it in my sketch in Earl Carroll's Vanities.
Later on, I used it as a title for a moving picture I did for Mack
Sennett. I do not claim to be the originator of this line as it was
probably used long before I was born in some old melodrama.
Letter, 8 Feb. 1944, in R. J. Fields (ed.) W. C. Fields by Himself (1974)
pt. 2 (also used by Fields in his 1933 film The Fatal Glass of Beer)
Hell, I never vote for anybody. I always vote against.
In Robert Lewis Taylor W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (1950)
p. 228
6.13 Harry Julian Fink, Rita M. Fink, and Dean Riesner
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Go ahead, make my day.
Dirty Harry (1971 film; words spoken by Clint Eastwood)
6.14 Ronald Firbank
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1886-1926
"O! help me, heaven," she prayed, "to be decorative and to do right!"
Flower Beneath the Foot (1923) ch. 2
Looking back, I remember the average curate at home as something between a
eunuch and a snigger.
Flower Beneath the Foot (1923) ch. 4
There was a pause--just long enough for an angel to pass, flying slowly.
Vainglory (1915) ch. 6
All millionaires love a baked apple.
Vainglory (1915) ch. 13
"I know of no joy," she airily began, "greater than a cool white dress
after the sweetness of confession."
Valmouth (1919) ch. 4
6.15 Fred Fisher
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1875-1942
See Ada Benson (2.55)
6.16 H. A. L. Fisher
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1856-1940
One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and
more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm,
a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see
only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only
one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no
generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should
recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent
and the unforeseen.
History of Europe (1935) p. vii
6.17 John Arbuthnot Fisher (Baron Fisher)
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1841-1920
The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.
Lecture notes 1899-1902, in R. H. Bacon Life of Lord Fisher (1929) vol. 1,
ch. 7
Yours till Hell freezes.
Letter to George Lambert, 5 Apr. 1909, in A. J. Marder Fear God and Dread
Nought (1956) vol. 2, pt. 1, ch. 2. Cf. F. Ponsonby Reflections of Three
Reigns (1951) p. 131: Once an officer in India wrote to me and ended his
letter "Yours till Hell freezes." I used this forcible expression in
a letter to Fisher, and he adopted it instead of "Yours sincerely" and
used it a great deal.
You must be ruthless, relentless, and remorseless! Sack the lot!
Letter to The Times 2 Sept. 1919
This letter is not to argue with your leading article of September 2.
(It's only d--d fools who argue!)
Never contradict
Never explain
Never apologize
(Those are the secrets of a happy life!)
Letter to The Times, 5 Sept. 1919
I want an old-fashioned house
With an old-fashioned fence
And an old-fashioned millionaire.
Old-Fashioned Girl (1954 song; popularized by Eartha Kitt)
6.19 Albert H. Fitz
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You are my honey, honeysuckle, I am the bee.
The Honeysuckle and the Bee (1901 song; music by William H. Penn)
6.20 F. Scott Fitzgerald
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1896-1940
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
All Sad Young Men (1926) "Rich Boy" (Ernest Hemingway's rejoinder in his
story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"--in Esquire Aug. 1936--was: "Yes, they
have more money")
The beautiful and damned.
Title of novel (1922)
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas
have died there.
Note-Books E, in Edmund Wilson Crack-Up (1945)
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
Note-Books E, in Edmund Wilson Crack-Up (1945)
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to
function.
Esquire Feb. 1936, "The Crack-Up"
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the
morning, day after day.
Esquire Mar. 1936, "Handle with Care"
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've
been turning over in my mind ever since.
Great Gatsby (1925) ch. 1
In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the
whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
Great Gatsby (1925) ch. 3
Her voice is full of money.
Great Gatsby (1925) ch. 7
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--to-morrow we
will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning--
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the
past.
Great Gatsby (1925) ch. 9
There are no second acts in American lives.
In Edmund Wilson Last Tycoon (1949) "Hollywood, etc. Notes"
She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely
more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in
Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.
This Side of Paradise (1921) bk. 1, ch. 1
Underneath the Arches,
I dream my dreams away,
Underneath the Arches,
On cobble-stones I lay.
Underneath the Arches (1932 song; additional words by Reg Connelly)
6.24 Michael Flanders and Donald Swann
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Michael Flanders 1922-1975
Donald Swann 1923-
I'm a gnu
A gnother gnu.
The Gnu (1956 song)
Mud! Mud! Glorious mud!
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.
So, follow me, follow,
Down to the hollow,
And there let us wallow
In glorious mud.
Hippopotamus Song (1952)
I don't eat people,
I won't eat people,
I don't eat people,
Eating people is wrong!
The Reluctant Cannibal (1956 song)
6.25 James Elroy Flecker
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1884-1915
We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage
And swear that beauty lives though lilies die,
We Poets of the proud old lineage
Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why,--
What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales
Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Prologue"
When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And earth is but a star, that once had shone.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Prologue"
Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells,
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) p. 8
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) p. 8
How splendid in the morning glows the lily; with what grace he throws
His supplication to the rose.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Yasmin"
And some to Meccah turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Yasmin"
For one night or the other night
Will come the Gardener in white, and gathered flowers are dead, Yasmin.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Yasmin"
The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Gates of Damascus"
A ship, an isle, a sickle moon--
With few but with how splendid stars
The mirrors of the sea are strewn
Between their silver bars!
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "A Ship, an Isle, and a Sickle Moon"
For pines are gossip pines the wide world through
And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Brumana"
Half to forget the wandering and pain,
Half to remember days that have gone by,
And dream and dream that I am home again!
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Brumana"
Noon strikes on England, noon on Oxford town,
Beauty she was statue cold--there's blood upon her gown:
Noon of my dreams, O noon!
Proud and godly kings had built her, long ago,
With her towers and tombs and statues all arow,
With her fair and floral air and the love that lingers there,
And the streets where the great men go.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Dying Patriot"
West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides
I must go
Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the young
Star captains glow.
Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913) "Dying Patriot"
I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire.
Old Ships (1915) title poem
And with great lies about his wooden horse
Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.
Old Ships (1915) title poem
It was so old a ship--who knows, who knows?
--And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain
To see the mast burst open with a rose,
And the whole deck put on its leaves again.
Old Ships (1915) title poem
How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.
36 Poems (1910) "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence"
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.
36 Poems (1910) "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence"
6.26 Ian Fleming
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1908-1964
Bond said, "And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini--with a slice of
lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or
Polish vodka."
Dr No (1958) ch. 14
From Russia with love.
Title of novel (1957)
Live and let die.
Title of novel (1954)
6.27 Robert, Marquis de Flers and Arman de Caillavet
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Robert, Marquis de Flers 1872-1927
Arman de Caillavet 1869-1915
D‚mocratie est le nom que nous donnons au peuple toutes les fois que nous
avons besoin de lui.
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
L'habit vert act 1, sc. 12, in La petite illustration s‚rie th‚ѓtre
31 May 1913
We won't pay, we won't pay.
Title of play (1975; translated by Lino Pertile in 1978 as "We Can't Pay?
We Won't Pay!" and performed in London in 1981 as "Can't Pay? Won't Pay!")
6.29 Marshal Ferdinand Foch
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1851-1929
Mon centre cЉde, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque.
My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am
attacking.
Message sent during the first Battle of the Marne, Sept. 1914, in R.
Recouly Foch (1919) ch. 6
Ce n'est pas un trait‚ de paix, c'est un armistice de vingt ans.
This [the treaty signed at Versailles in 1919] is not a peace treaty, it
is an armistice for twenty years.
In Paul Reynaud M‚moires (1963) vol. 2, p. 457
6.30 J. Foley
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Old soldiers never die,
They simply fade away.
Old Soldiers Never Die (1920 song; copyrighted by J. Foley but perhaps
a "folk-song" from the First World War)
6.31 Michael Foot
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1913-
A speech from Ernest Bevin on a major occasion had all the horrific
fascination of a public execution. If the mind was left immune, eyes and
ears and emotions were riveted.
Aneurin Bevan (1962) vol. 1, ch. 13
Think of it! A second Chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of
eunuchs.
Hansard 3 Feb. 1969, col. 88
It is not necessary that every time he [Norman Tebbit] rises he should
give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat.
Hansard 2 Mar. 1978, col. 668
6.32 Anna Ford
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1943-
Let's face it, there are no plain women on television.
In Observer 23 Sept. 1979
6.33 Gerald Ford
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1909-
I believe that truth is the glue that holds Government together, not only
our Government, but civilization itself.
Speech, 9 Aug. 1974, in G. J. Lankevich Gerald R. Ford (1977)
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution
works; our great Republic is a Government of laws and not of men. Here the
people rule.
Speech, 9 Aug. 1974, in G. J. Lankevich Gerald R. Ford (1977)
There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be
under a Ford administration.
In television debate with Jimmy Carter, 6 Oct. 1976, in S. Kraus Great
Debates (1979) p. 482
If the Government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big
enough to take away everything you have.
In John F. Parker If Elected (1960) p. 193
I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as
Lincoln's. But I will do my best to equal his brevity and plain speaking.
Speech on taking vice-presidential oath, 6 Dec. 1973, in Washington Post
7 Dec. 1973
6.34 Henry Ford
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1863-1947
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We
want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's
damn is the history we make today.
Chicago Tribune 25 May 1916 (interview with Charles N. Wheeler)
People can have the Model T in any colour--so long as it's black.
In Allan Nevins Ford (1957) vol. 2, ch. 15
6.35 Lena Guilbert Ford
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1870-1916
Keep the Home-fires burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away
They dream of Home.
There's a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining;
Turn the dark cloud inside out,
Till the boys come Home.
'Till the Boys Come Home! (1914 song; music by Ivor Novello)
Lieutenant Forgy...said that on Dec. 7 he was at Pearl Harbor directing
preparations for church services aboard his ship...when general quarters
were sounded as the Japanese attacked. He reported to his battle station.
The power was off on a powder hoist, he said, and so Lieutenant Edwin
Woodhead formed a line of sailors to pass the ammunition by hand to the
deck. The chaplain moved along the line, encouraging the passers and
repeating, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."
New York Times 1 Nov. 1942. Cf. Frank Loesser's 1942 song Praise the Lord
and Pass the Ammunition .
6.37 E. M. Forster
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1879-1970
They [public schoolboys] go forth into a world that is not entirely
composed of public-school men or even of Anglo-Saxons, but of men who are
as various as the sands of the sea; into a world of whose richness and
subtlety they have no conception. They go forth into it with
well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and undeveloped hearts.
Abinger Harvest (1936) "Notes on English Character"
It is not that the Englishman can't feel--it is that he is afraid to feel.
He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must
not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he
talks--his pipe might fall out if he did.
Abinger Harvest (1936) "Notes on English Character"
Everything must be like something, so what is this like?
Abinger Harvest (1936) "Doll Souse"
American women shoot the hippopotamus with eyebrows made of platinum.
Abinger Harvest (1936) "Mickey and Minnie." Cf. 24:8
It is frivolous stuff, and how rare, how precious is frivolity! How few
writers can prostitute all their powers! They are always implying "I am
capable of higher things."
Abinger Harvest (1936) "Ronald Firbank"
The historian must have a third quality as well: some conception of how
men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of
the dead.
Abinger Harvest (1936) "Captain Edward Gibbon"
Yes--oh dear yes--the novel tells a story.
Aspects of the Novel (1927) ch. 2
That old lady in the anecdote...was not so much angry as contemptuous....
"How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?"
Aspects of the Novel (1927) ch. 5. Cf. Graham Wallas 222:8
I am only touching on one aspect of Ulysses: it is of course far more
than a fantasy--it is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an
inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where
sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the
interests of Hell.
Aspects of the Novel (1927) ch. 6
Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes
to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.
Note from commonplace book, in O. Stallybrass (ed.) Aspects of the Novel
and Related Writings (1974) p. 129
Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong
feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the
glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and
sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
Howards End (1910) ch. 2
It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most
sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
Howards End (1910) ch. 5
The music [the scherzo of Beethoven's 5th Symphony] started with a goblin
walking quietly over the universe, from end to end. Others followed him.
They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made them so terrible
to Helen. They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as
splendour or heroism in the world. After the interlude of elephants
dancing, they returned and made the observation for a second time. Helen
could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same,
and had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse. Panic and emptiness!
The goblins were right.
Howards End (1910) ch. 5
All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.
Howards End (1910) ch. 6
Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this
outer life of telegrams and anger.
Howards End (1910) ch. 19
She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul,
and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her
sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is
life to either, will die.
Howards End (1910) ch. 22 (the title-page also has "Only connect...")
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
Howards End (1910) ch. 27 (chapter 41 has "Death destroys a man, but the
idea of death saves him")
"I don't think I understand people very well. I only know whether I like
or dislike them."
"Then you are an Oriental."
Passage to India (1924) ch. 2
The so-called white races are really pinko-grey.
Passage to India (1924) ch. 7
The echo in a Marabar cave is not like these, it is entirely devoid of
distinction. Whatever is said, the same monotonous noise replies, and
quivers up and down the walls until it is absorbed into the roof. "Boum"
is the sound as far as the human alphabet can express it, or "bou-oum,"
or "ou-boum,"--utterly dull. Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the
squeak of a boot, all produce "boum."
Passage to India (1924) ch. 14
The echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life.
Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to
murmur, "Pathos, piety, courage--they exist, but are identical, and so is
filth. Everything exists, nothing has value."
Passage to India (1924) ch. 14
The inscriptions which the poets of the State had composed were hung where
they could not be read, or had twitched their drawing-pins out of the
stucco, and one of them (composed in English to indicate His universality)
consisted, by an unfortunate slip of the draughtsman, of the words, "God
si Love."
God si Love. Is this the first message of India?
Passage to India (1924) ch. 33
A room with a view.
Title of novel (1908)
The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto,
or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the
blue sky and the men and women under it.
Room with a View (1908) ch. 2
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my
country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray
my country.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) "What I Believe"
So Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because
it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion
to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) "What I Believe" ("Love, the Beloved
Republic" is a phrase from Swinburne's poem Hertha )
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think
creation's.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) "Raison d'€tre of Criticism"
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are
ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than
we have yet got ourselves.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) "Books That Influenced Me"
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) "Gide and George"
6.38 Bruce Forsyth
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1928-
Didn't she [or he or they] do well?
Catch-phrase in "The Generation Game" on BBC Television, 1973 onwards
Nice to see you--to see you, nice.
Catch-phrase in "The Generation Game" on BBC Television, 1973 onwards
I'm in charge.
Catch-phrase in "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" on ITV, 1958
onwards
6.39 Harry Emerson Fosdick
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1878-1969
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and
propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it
puts in the place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it.
I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or
support another.
Sermon in New York on Armistice Day 1933, in Secret of Victorious Living
(1934) p. 97
6.40 Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole-Fran‡ois Thibault)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1844-1924
Dans tout ђtat polic‚, la richesse est chose sacr‚e; dans les d‚mocraties
elle est la seule chose sacr‚e.
In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it
is the only sacred thing.
L'Ile des pingouins (Penguin Island, 1908) pt. 6, ch. 2
Ils [les pauvres] y doivent travailler devant la majestueuse ‚galit‚ des
lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de
mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
They [the poor] have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the
law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to
beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Le Lys rouge (The Red Lily, 1894) ch. 7
Le bon critique est celui qui raconte les aventures de son ѓmeau milieu
des chefs-d'”uvre.
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among
masterpieces.
La Vie litt‚raire (The Literary Life, 1888) dedicatory letter
6.41 Georges Franju
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1912-
See Jean-Luc Godard (7.34)
6.42 Sir James George Frazer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1854-1941
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his
mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
The Golden Bough (ed. 2, 1900) vol. 1, p. 288
6.43 Stan Freberg
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1926-
It's too loud, man....It's too shrill, man, it's too piercing.
Banana Boat (Day-O) (1957 record; lines spoken by Peter Leeds)
Excuse me, you ain't any kin to the snare drummer, are you?
Yellow Rose of Texas (1955 record; words spoken to a loud banjo-player)
6.44 Arthur Freed
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1973
Singin' in the rain.
Title of song (1929; music by Nacio Herb Brown)
6.45 Ralph Freed
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I like New York in June,
How about you?
How About You? (1941 song; music by Burton Lane)
Where's the beef?
Advertising slogan for Wendy's Hamburgers in campaign launched 9 Jan.
1984 (taken up by Walter Mondale in a televised debate with Gary Hart from
Atlanta, 11 March 1984: "When I hear your new ideas I'm reminded of that
ad, 'Where's the beef?'")
6.47 John Freeman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1880-1929
It was the lovely moon--she lifted
Slowly her white brow among
Bronze cloud-waves that ebbed and drifted
Faintly, faintlier afar.
Stone Trees (1916) "It Was the Lovely Moon"
6.48 Marilyn French
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-
Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in
their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that's all they are.
They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.
The Women's Room (1977) bk. 5, ch. 19
Anatomy is destiny.
Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings, 1924) vol. 5, p. 210
"Itzig, wohin reit'st Du?" "Weiss ich, frag das Pferd."
"Itzig, where are you riding to?" "Don't ask me, ask the horse."
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 7 July 1898, in Aus den Anf„ngen der
Psychoanalyse (Origins of Psychoanalysis, 1950) p. 275
Wir sind so eingerichtet, dass wir nur den Kontrast intensiv geniessen
k”nnen, den Zustand nur sehr wenig.
We are so made, that we can only derive intense enjoyment from a contrast,
and only very little from a state of things.
Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and its Discontents, 1930)
ch. 2
Vergleiche entscheiden nichts, das ist wahr, aber sie k”nnen machen, dass
man sich heimischer fЃhlt.
Analogies decide nothing, that is true, but they can make one feel more at
home.
Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur EinfЃhrung in die Psychoanalyse (New
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1933) ch. 31
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet
been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine
soul, is "What does a woman want?"
Letter to Marie Bonaparte, in Ernest Jones Sigmund Freud: Life and Work
(1955) vol. 2, pt. 3, ch. 16
6.50 Max Frisch
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1911-
Diskussion mit Hanna!--Ѓber Technik (laut Hanna) als Kniff, die Welt so
einzurichten, dass wir sie nicht erleben mЃssen.
Discussion with Hanna--about technology (according to Hanna) as the knack
of so arranging the world that we need not experience it.
Homo Faber (1957) pt. 2
6.51 Charles Frohman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1915
Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
Last words before drowning in the Lusitania, 7 May 1915, in I. F.
Marcosson and D. Frohman Charles Frohman (1916) ch. 19. Cf. J. M. Barrie
19:9
6.52 Erich Fromm
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1900-1980
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he
potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own
personality.
Man for Himself (1947) ch. 4
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the
twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth
century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means
schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became
slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
The Sane Society (1955) ch. 9
6.53 David Frost
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1939-
Hello, good evening, and welcome.
Catch-phrase in "The Frost Programme" on BBC Television, 1966 onwards
Seriously, though, he's doing a grand job!
Catch-phrase in "That Was The Week That Was," on BBC Television, 1962-3
6.54 Robert Frost
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1874-1963
It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The
figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure
is the same as for love.
Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.
A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into
being.
Collected Poems (1939) "Figure a Poem Makes"
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Further Range (1936) "Desert Places"
I never dared be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old.
Further Range (1936) "Precaution"
Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.
Further Range (1936) "Hardship of Accounting"
I've given offence by saying that I'd as soon write free verse as play
tennis with the net down.
In Edward Lathem Interviews with Robert Frost (1966) p. 203
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
In the Clearing (1962) "Cluster of Faith"
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Mountain Interval (1916) "Road Not Taken"
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Mountain Interval (1916) "Birches"
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
New Hampshire (1923) "Fire and Ice"
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
New Hampshire (1923) "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan't be gone long.--You come too.
North of Boston (1914) "The Pasture"
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it.
North of Boston (1914) "Mending Wall"
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
North of Boston (1914) "Mending Wall"
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
North of Boston (1914) "Mending Wall"
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope.
North of Boston (1914) "Death of the Hired Man"
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
"I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."
North of Boston (1914) "Death of the Hired Man"
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
North of Boston (1914) "Black Cottage"
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
North of Boston (1914) "Servant to Servants"
I've broken Anne of gathering bouquets.
It's not fair to the child. It can't be helped though:
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.
North of Boston (1914) "Self-Seeker"
Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in
interpretation.
In Louis Untermeyer Robert Frost: a Backward Look (1964) p. 18
Asked...whether he would define poetry as "escape" he answered hardily:
"No. Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."
Elizabeth S. Sergeant Robert Frost: the Trial by Existence (1960) ch. 18
I have been one acquainted with the night.
West-Running Brook (1928) "Acquainted with the Night"
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Title of poem in Witness Tree (1942)
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people.
Witness Tree (1942) "Gift Outright"
And were an epitaph to be my story
I'd have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
Witness Tree (1942) "Lesson for Today"
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Witness Tree (1942) "The Secret Sits"
6.55 Christopher Fry
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1907-
The dark is light enough.
Title of play (1954)
I travel light; as light,
That is, as a man can travel who will
Still carry his body around because
Of its sentimental value.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 1
What after all
Is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 1
What is official
Is incontestable. It undercuts
The problematical world and sells us life
At a discount.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 1
Where in this small-talking world can I find
A longitude with no platitude?
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3
The moon is nothing
But a circumambulating aphrodisiac
Divinely subsidized to provoke the world
Into a rising birth-rate.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3
I hear
A gay modulating anguish, rather like music.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3
The Great Bear is looking so geometrical
One would think that something or other could be proved.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3
The best
Thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in
Look as much like home as we can.
The Lady's not for Burning (1949) act 3
Try thinking of love, or something.
Amor vincit insomnia.
A Sleep of Prisoners (1951) p. 37
I hope
I've done nothing so monosyllabic as to cheat,
A spade is never so merely a spade as the word
Spade would imply.
Venus Observed (1950) act 2, sc. 1
I tell you,
Miss, I knows an undesirable character
When I see one; I've been one myself for years.
Venus Observed (1950) act 2, sc. 1
6.56 Roger Fry
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1934
Mr Fry...brought out a screen upon which there was a picture of a circus.
The interviewer was puzzled by the long waists, bulging necks and short
legs of the figures. "But how much wit there is in those figures," said Mr
Fry. "Art is significant deformity."
Virginia Woolf Roger Fry (1940) ch. 8
Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.
In Virginia Woolf Roger Fry (1940) ch. 11
6.57 R. Buckminster Fuller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-1983
Right now I am a passenger on space vehicle Earth zooming about the Sun at
60,000 miles per hour somewhere in the solar system.
In Gene Youngblood Expanded Cinema (1970) p. 24
Either war is obsolete or men are.
In New Yorker 8 Jan. 1966, p. 93
Here is God's purpose--
for God, to me, it seems,
is a verb
not a noun,
proper or improper.
No More Secondhand God (1963) p. 28 (poem written in 1940)
Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth,
and that is that no instruction book came with it.
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) ch. 4
6.58 Alfred Funke
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1869-?
Gott strafe England!
God punish England!
Schwert und Myrte (Sword and Myrtle, 1914) p. 78
6.59 Sir David Maxwell Fyfe
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1900-1967
See Lord Kilmuir (11.27)
6.60 Will Fyffe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1947
I belong to Glasgow
Dear Old Glasgow town!
But what's the matter wi' Glasgow?
For it's going round and round.
I'm only a common old working chap,
As anyone can see,
But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday,
Glasgow belongs to me.
I Belong to Glasgow (1920 song)
6.61 Rose Fyleman
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1877-1957
There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
Punch 23 May 1917 "Fairies"
7.0 G
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I say this to you: we may lose the vote today [on retaining nuclear
weapons] and the result may deal this Party a grave blow. It may not be
possible to prevent it, but I think there are many of us who will not
accept that this blow need be mortal, who will not believe that such an
end is inevitable. There are some of us, Mr Chairman, who will fight and
fight and fight again to save the Party we love. We will fight and fight
and fight again to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our
Party with its great past may retain its glory and its greatness.
Speech at Labour Party Conference, 5 Oct. 1960, in Report of 59th Annual
Conference p. 201
It [a European federation] does mean, if this is the idea, the end of
Britain as an independent European state....It means the end of a thousand
years of history.
Speech at Labour Party Conference, 3 Oct. 1962, in Report of 61st Annual
Conference p. 159
7.4 J. K. Galbraith
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1908-
These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political
faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy
is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be
a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural
parable, the bland lead the bland.
Affluent Society (1958) ch. 1
Perhaps the thing most evident of all is how new and varied become the
problems we must ponder when we break the nexus with the work of Ricardo
and face the economics of affluence of the world in which we live. It is
easy to see why the conventional wisdom resists so stoutly such a change.
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to
put out on the troubled seas of thought.
Affluent Society (1958) ch. 11
In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of
private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of
private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.
Affluent Society (1958) ch. 18. Cf. Sallust's Catiline 1ii. 22: Habemus
publice egestatem, privatim opulentiam. We have public poverty and
private opulence.
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between
the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Letter to President Kennedy, 2 Mar. 1962, in Ambassador's Journal (1969)
p. 312. Cf. R. A. Butler 43:1
7.5 John Galsworthy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1867-1933
He [Jolyon] was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing
ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many people looked on
it as immoral.
In Chancery (1920) pt. 1, ch. 13
I s'pose Jolyon's told you something about the young man. From all I can
learn, he's got no business, no income, and no connection worth speaking
of; but then, I know nothing--nobody tells me anything.
Man of Property (1906) pt. 1, ch. 1
7.6 Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ray Galton 1930-
Alan Simpson 1929-
I came in here in all good faith to help my country. I don't mind giving
a reasonable amount [of blood], but a pint...why that's very nearly an
armful. I'm sorry. I'm not walking around with an empty arm for anybody.
The Blood Donor (1961 television programme) in Hancock's Half Hour (1974)
p. 113 (words spoken by Tony Hancock)
Recently I saw a film of Gandhi when he came to England in 1930. He
disembarked in Southampton and on the gangway he was already overwhelmed
by journalists asking questions. One of them asked, "Mr Gandhi, what do
you think of modern civilization?" And Mr Gandhi said, "That would be a
good idea."
E. F. Schumacher Good Work (1979) ch. 2
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Non-Violence in Peace and War (1942) vol. 1, ch. 142
The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his
fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and
slavery are mental states.
Non-Violence in Peace and War (1949) vol. 2, ch. 5
I wanted to avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of my faith.
It is also the last article of my creed.
Speech at Shahi Bag, 18 Mar. 1922, in Young India 23 Mar. 1922
7.8 Greta Garbo (Greta Lovisa Gustafsson)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-1990
I want to be alone....I just want to be alone.
Grand Hotel (1932 film; script by William A. Drake)
I tank I go home.
On being refused a pay rise by Louis B. Mayer, in Norman Zierold Moguls
(1969) ch. 9
7.9 Ed Gardner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-1963
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he
sings.
In Duffy's Tavern (1940s American radio programme)
7.10 John Nance Garner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1967
The vice-presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss.
In O. C. Fisher Cactus Jack (1978) ch. 11
I'm leaning on a lamp-post at the corner of the street,
In case a certain little lady comes by.
Leaning on a Lamp-Post (1937 song; sung by George Formby in film Father
Knew Best)
7.13 Noel Gay and Ralph Butler
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7.14 Sir Eric Geddes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1937
The Germans, if this Government is returned, are going to pay every penny;
they are going to be squeezed as a lemon is squeezed-- until the pips
squeak. My only doubt is not whether we can squeeze hard enough, but
whether there is enough juice.
Speech at Cambridge, 10 Dec. 1918, in Cambridge Daily News 11 Dec. 1918
7.15 Bob Geldof
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1954-
Most people get into bands for three very simple rock and roll reasons: to
get laid, to get fame, and to get rich.
Melody Maker 27 Aug. 1977
7.16 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bob Geldof 1954-
Feed the world
Feed the world.
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again.
Do They Know it's Christmas? (1984 song)
7.17 King George V
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1936
After I am dead, the boy [Edward VIII] will ruin himself in twelve months.
In Keith Middlemas and John Barnes Baldwin (1969) ch. 34
I said to your predecessor: "You know what they're all saying, no more
coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris." The fellow didn't even
laugh.
Remark to Anthony Eden, 23 Dec. 1935, following Samuel Hoare's resignation
as Foreign Secretary on 18 Dec. 1935, in Earl of Avon Facing the
Dictators (1962) pt. 2, ch. 1
I venture to allude to the impression which seemed generally to prevail
among their brethren across the seas, that the Old Country must wake up if
she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial
trade against foreign competitors.
Speech at Guildhall, 5 Dec. 1901, in Harold Nicolson King George V (1952)
p. 73 (the speech was reprinted in 1911 with the title "Wake up, England")
Bugger Bognor.
Remark said to have been made either in 1929 when the King was informed
that a deputation of leading citizens was asking that the town should be
named Bognor Regis because of his convalescence there after a serious
illness, or on his death-bed in 1936 when one of his doctors sought to
soothe him with the remark "Cheer up, your Majesty, you will soon be at
Bognor again." See Kenneth Rose King George V (1983) ch. 9
The last time I talked to the King [George V] on the morning of his death,
Monday 20th, he had The Times on his table in front of him opened at the
"Imperial and Foreign" page and I think his remark to me, "How's the
Empire?" was prompted by some para. he had read on this page.
Letter from Lord Wigram, 31 Jan. 1936, in J. E. Wrench Geoffrey Dawson and
Our Times (1955) ch. 28
Gentlemen, I am so sorry for keeping you waiting like this. I am unable to
concentrate.
Words spoken on his death-bed, reported in memorandum by Lord Wigram,
20 Jan. 1936, in History Today Dec. 1986
I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates
of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude
of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.
Message read at Terlincthun Cemetery, Boulogne, 13 May 1922, in The Times
15 May 1922
7.18 Daniel George (Daniel George Bunting)
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O Freedom, what liberties are taken in thy name!
In Sagittarius and D. George Perpetual Pessimist (1963) p. 58
7.19 George Gershwin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1937
See Ira Gershwin (7.20)
7.20 Ira Gershwin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1983
A foggy day in London Town
Had me low and had me down.
I viewed the morning with alarm,
The British Museum had lost its charm.
How long, I wondered, could this thing last?
But the age of miracles hadn't passed,
For, suddenly, I saw you there
And through foggy London town the sun was shining everywhere.
A Foggy Day (1937 song; music by George Gershwin)
I got rhythm,
I got music,
I got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
I Got Rhythm (1930 song; music by George Gershwin)
Lady, be good!
Title of musical (1924; music by George Gershwin)
You like potato and I like po-tah-to,
You like tomato and I like to-mah-to;
Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to--
Let's call the whole thing off!
Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (1937 song; music by George Gershwin)
Holding hands at midnight
'Neath a starry sky,
Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try.
Nice Work If You Can Get It (1937 song; music by George Gershwin)
Every year, in the fulness o' summer, when the sukebind hangs heavy from
the wains...'tes the same. And when the spring comes her hour is upon her
again. 'Tes the hand of Nature and we women cannot escape it.
Cold Comfort Farm (1932) ch. 5
When you were very small--so small that the lightest puff of breeze blew
your little crinoline skirt over your head--you had seen something nasty
in the woodshed.
Cold Comfort Farm (1932) ch. 10
Mr Mybug, however, did ask Rennett to marry him. He said that, by god, D.
H. Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull,
bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be
achieved save in the long monotony of marriage?
Cold Comfort Farm (1932) ch. 20
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent
forth.
Prophet (1923) "On Children"
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with
distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate
of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
Prophet (1923) "On Work"
An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
Sand and Foam (1926) p. 59
7.24 Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1962
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
Whin (1918) "Lament"
M'est avis...que le profit n'est pas toujours ce qui mЉne l'homme; qu'il y
a des actions d‚sint‚ress‚es....Par d‚sint‚ress‚ j'entends: gratuit. Et
que le mal, ce que l'on appelle: le mal, peut €tre aussi gratuit que le
bien.
I believe...that profit is not always what motivates man; that there are
disinterested actions....By disinterested I mean: gratuitous. And that
evil acts, what people call evil, can be as gratuitous as good acts.
Les Caves du Vatican (The Vatican Cellars, 1914) bk. 4, ch. 7
Hugo--h‚las!
Hugo--alas!
Answer when he was asked who was the greatest 19th-century poet, in Claude
Martin La Maturit‚ d'Andr‚ Gide (1977) p. 502
7.26 Eric Gill
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1940
That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do
in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him.
Art-nonsense and Other Essays (1929) "Slavery and Freedom"
7.27 Terry Gilliam
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It would be unfair to suggest that one of the most characteristic sounds
of the English Sunday is the sound of Harold Hobson barking up the wrong
tree.
Encore Nov.-Dec. 1959
Sunday, bloody Sunday.
Title of film (1971)
7.29 Allen Ginsberg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-
What if someone gave a war & Nobody came?
Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.
Fall of America (1972) "Graffiti"
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an
angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Howl (1956) p. 9
7.30 George Gipp
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
d. 1920
"Some time, Rock," he said, "when the team's up against it, when things
are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys--tell them to go in there
with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper."
Knut Rockne "Gipp the Great" in Collier's 22 Nov. 1930
7.31 Jean Giraudoux
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1944
Nous savons tous ici que le droit est la plus puissante des ‚coles de
l'imagination. Jamais poЉte n'a interpr‚t‚ la nature aussi librement qu'un
juriste la r‚alit‚.
We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the
imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer
interprets the truth.
La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place,
1935) act. 2, sc. 5
7.32 George Glass
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-1984
An actor is a kind of a guy who if you ain't talking about him ain't
listening.
In Bob Thomas Brando (1973) ch. 8 (said to be often quoted by Marlon
Brando, who is cited as quoting it in Observer 1 Jan. 1956)
7.33 John A. Glover-Kind
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
d. 1918
I do like to be beside the seaside.
Title of song (1909)
La photographie, c'est la v‚rit‚. Le cin‚ma: la v‚rit‚ vingt-quatre fois
par seconde.
Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times per second.
Le Petit Soldat (1960 film), in Lettres Fran‡aises 31 Jan. 1963
"Movies should have a beginning, a middle and an end," harrumphed French
Film Maker Georges Franju at a symposium some years back. "Certainly,"
replied Jean-Luc Godard. "But not necessarily in that order."
Time 14 Sept. 1981
7.35 A. D. Godley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1856-1925
What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!...
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
Letter to C. R. L. Fletcher, 10 Jan 1914, in Reliquiae (1926) vol. 1,
p. 292
7.36 Joseph Goebbels
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1897-1945
Ohne Butter werden wir fertig, aber nicht beispielsweise ohne Kanonen.
Wenn wir einmal Ѓberfallen werden, dann k”nnen wir uns nicht mit Butter,
sondern nur mit Kanonen verteidigen.
We can manage without butter but not, for example, without guns. If we
are attacked we can only defend ourselves with arms not with butter.
Speech in Berlin, 17 Jan. 1936, in Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung 18 Jan.
1936. Cf. Hermann Goering
7.37 Hermann Goering
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1946
We have no butter, meine Volksgenossen [my countrymen], but I ask
you--would you rather have butter or guns? Shall we import lard or metal
ores? Let me tell you--preparedness makes us powerful. Butter merely makes
us fat.
Speech at Hamburg, 1936, in W. Frischauer Goering (1951) ch. 10
7.38 Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (Benjamin Eisenberg)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ivan Goff 1910-
Ben Roberts 1916-1984
Anyway, Ma, I made it....Top of the world!
White Heat (1949 film; last lines--spoken by James Cagney)
7.39 Isaac Goldberg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1938
Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.
Reflex Oct. 1927, p. 77
7.40 William Golding
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1911-
Lord of the flies.
Title of novel (1954)
7.41 Emma Goldman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1869-1940
Anarchism, then, really, stands for the liberation of the human mind from
the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the
dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraints of
government.
Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) p. 68
7.42 Barry Goldwater
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-
I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice!
And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue!
Speech accepting the presidential nomination, 16 July 1964, in New York
Times 17 July 1964, p. 1
7.43 Sam Goldwyn (Samuel Goldfish)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1974
Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western
Union.
In Arthur Marx Goldwyn (1976) ch. 15
Gentlemen, include me out.
Said on resigning from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of
America, Oct. 1933, in Michael Freedland The Goldwyn Touch (1986) ch. 10
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on.
In Alva Johnston The Great Goldwyn (1937) ch. 1
"I can answer you in two words, 'im-possible'" is almost the cornerstone
of the Goldwyn legend, but Sam did not say it. It was printed late in 1925
in a humorous magazine and credited to an anonymous Potash or Perlmutter.
Alva Johnston The Great Goldwyn (1937) ch. 1
That's the way with these directors, they're always biting the hand that
lays the golden egg.
In Alva Johnston The Great Goldwyn (1937) ch. 1
Any man who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.
In Norman Zierold Moguls (1969) ch. 3
It is doubtful that Goldwyn made the remark attributed to him by several
authors: "The reason so many people showed up at his [Louis B. Mayer's]
funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead." In Hollywood
one hears that sentiment attributed to other moguls at other funerals.
It's a good story, and the temptation to use it is almost irresistible.
Goldwyn, however, denies making the remark. He did not go to the funeral,
was in fact not invited, but his son who was with him on that day says he
was deeply moved despite the fact that he never liked Mayer.
Norman Zierold Moguls (1969) ch. 3
Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay at
home and see bad television for nothing?
In Observer 9 Sept. 1956
7.44 Paul Goodman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1911-1972
All men are creative but few are artists.
Growing up Absurd (1961) ch. 9
7.45 Mack Gordon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1904-1959
Pardon me boy is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo,
Track twenty nine,
Boy you can gimme a shine.
I can afford to board a Chattanooga Choo-choo,
I've got my fare and just a trifle to spare.
You leave the Pennsylvania station 'bout a quarter to four,
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore,
Dinner in the diner nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham'n eggs in Carolina.
Chattanooga Choo-choo (1941 song; music by Harry Warren)
7.46 Stuart Gorrell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1963
Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find,
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
Georgia on my Mind (1930 song; music by Hoagy Carmichael)
7.47 Sir Edmund Gosse
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1849-1928
At a lunch at the House of Lords [circa 1906] given by Edmund Gosse...the
woolly-bearded poet, Sturge Moore...entered late. Gosse, a naughty host,
whispered in my ear, "A sheep in sheep's clothing."
F. Greenslet Under the Bridge (1943) ch. 10. Cf. Winston Churchill 56:3
7.48 Lord Gowrie (2nd Earl of Gowrie)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1939-
[њ1,500 a month] is not what people need for living in central London, and
which I am more or less obliged to do.
In BBC radio interview, 4 Sept. 1985, in The Times 5 Sept. 1985 (giving
reason for resigning as Minister for the Arts)
All my shows are great. Some of them are bad. But they are all great.
In Observer 14 Sept. 1975
7.50 D. M. Graham
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1911-
That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.
Motion worded by Graham (the then-Librarian) for debate at the Oxford
Union, 9 Feb. 1933, and passed by 275 votes to 153
7.51 Harry Graham
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1874-1936
Weep not for little L‚onie
Abducted by a French Marquis!
Though loss of honour was a wrench
Just think how it's improved her French.
More Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1930) "Compensation"
Aunt Jane observed, the second time
She tumbled off a bus,
"The step is short from the Sublime
To the Ridiculous."
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899) "Equanimity"
Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899) "Tender-Heartedness"
O'er the rugged mountain's brow
Clara threw the twins she nursed,
And remarked, "I wonder now
Which will reach the bottom first?"
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899) "Calculating Clara"
"There's been an accident," they said,
"Your servant's cut in half; he's dead!"
"Indeed!" said Mr Jones, "and please,
Send me the half that's got my keys."
Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes (1899) "Mr Jones" (poem attributed to
"G.W.")
The curate faced the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself
on him. "O Mr Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake do
not be rash!" He was not rash.
The Golden Age (1895) "The Burglars"
Monkeys, who very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they should be set to
earn their livings.
The Golden Age (1895) "Lusisti Satis"
Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so
much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
Wind in the Willows (1908) ch. 1
"There's cold chicken inside it," replied the Rat briefly;
"coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgerkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwidgespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater--"
Wind in the Willows (1908) ch. 1
"Glorious, stirring sight!" murmured Toad, never offering to move. "The
poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here
today--in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities
jumped--always somebody else's horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!"
Wind in the Willows (1908) ch. 2
The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half as much
As intelligent Mr Toad!
Wind in the Willows (1908) ch. 10
7.53 Bernie Grant
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1944-
The police were to blame for what happened on Sunday night and what they
got was a bloody good hiding.
Speech as leader of Haringey Council outside Tottenham Town Hall, 8 Oct.
1985, in The Times 9 Oct. 1985
7.54 Ethel Watts-Mumford Grant
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1878-1940
See Ethel Watts Mumford (13.139)
7.55 Robert Graves
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1895-1985
"What did the mayor do?"
"I was coming to that."
Collected Poems (1938) "Welsh Incident"
Goodbye to all that.
Title of autobiography (1929)
If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
Speech at London School of Economics, 6 Dec. 1963, in Mammon and Black
Goddess (1965) p. 3
His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.
Pier-Glass (1921) "Lost Love"
As you are woman, so be lovely:
As you are lovely, so be various,
Merciful as constant, constant as various,
So be mine, as I yours for ever.
Poems (1927) "Pygmalion to Galatea"
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose.
Poems (1927) "Cool Web"
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Poems and Satires (1951) "Counting the Beats"
Far away is close at hand
Close joined is far away,
Love shall come at your command
Yet will not stay.
Whipperginny (1923) "Song of Contrariety"
7.56 Hannah Green (Joanne Greenberg)
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I never promised you a rose garden.
Title of novel (1964)
7.57 Graham Greene
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1904-
Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they
have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent.
I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.
Comedians (1966) pt. 3, ch. 4
Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage
a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive.
Heart of the Matter (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 2
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.
Heart of the Matter (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 2
He [Harris] felt the loyalty we all feel to unhappiness--the sense that
that is where we really belong.
Heart of the Matter (1948) bk. 2, pt. 2, ch. 1
Any victim demands allegiance.
Heart of the Matter (1948) bk. 3, pt. 1, ch. 1
His hilarity was like a scream from a crevasse.
Heart of the Matter (1948) bk. 3, pt. 1, ch. 1
Our man in Havana.
Title of novel (1958)
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the
future in.
The Power and the Glory (1940) pt. 1, ch. 1
Greene and Bevan's research largely consisted of visiting pubs and asking
people why they drank Guinness. Again and again they received
the...reply--they drank Guinness because it was good for them. So
universal was this idea, Greene decided he need look no further for
a copyline. "Guinness" the advertisements would simply say "is good for
you."
Brian Sibley Book of Guinness Advertising (1985) ch. 4
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London so,
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner--
That I think of her--Wherever I go.
I get a funny feeling inside of me--
Just walking up and down,--
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner
That I love London Town.
Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner (1947 song)
The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead, who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth.
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth.
The Times 28 May 1915 "Into Battle"
If you were the only girl in the world
And I were the only boy.
If You Were the only Girl in the World (song from musical The Bing Boys
(1916); music by Nat Ayer)
7.64 Sir Edward Grey (Viscount Grey of Fallodon)
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1862-1933
A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of the last week--he thinks
it was on Monday August 3 [1914]. We were standing at a window of my room
in the Foreign Office. It was getting dusk, and the lamps were being lit
in the space below on which we were looking. My friend recalls that
I remarked on this with the words: "The lamps are going out all over
Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
25 Years (1925) vol. 2, ch. 18
You may think that one of the ways in which you can test this book [Lady
Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence], and test it from the most liberal
outlook, is to ask yourselves the question when you have read it through:
"Would you approve of your young sons and daughters--because girls can
read as well as boys--reading this book?" Is it a book you would have
lying around in your own house? Is it a book you would even wish your wife
or your servants to read?
Speech for the prosecution at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey,
20 Oct. 1960, in The Times 21 Oct. 1960
7.66 Leon Griffiths
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'Er indoors.
Used in ITV television series Minder (1979 onwards) by Arthur Daley
(played by George Cole) to refer to his wife
7.67 Jo Grimond (Baron Grimond)
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1913-
In bygone days, commanders were taught that when in doubt, they should
march their troops towards the sound of gunfire. I intend to march my
troops towards the sound of gunfire.
Speech at Liberal Party Annual Assembly, 14 Sept. 1963, in Guardian
16 Sept. 1963
7.68 Philip Guedalla
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1889-1944
Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma.
Masters and Men (1923) "Ministers of State"
History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.
Supers and Supermen (1920) "Some Historians"
The cheerful clatter of Sir James Barrie's cans as he went round with the
milk of human kindness.
Supers and Supermen (1920) "Some Critics"
The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic
arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.
Supers and Supermen (1920) "Some Critics"
7.69 R. Guidry
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See you later, alligator,
After 'while, crocodile;
Can't you see you're in my way, now,
Don't you know you cramp my style?
See You Later Alligator (1956 song)
7.70 Texas Guinan (Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan)
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1884-1933
Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
In New York World-Telegram 21 Mar. 1931, p. 25 (asserts that Guinan used
the phrase at her night club at least six or seven years previously. The
saying is also attributed to Jack Osterman and Mae West; it was the title
of a 1927 song (see Billy Rose and Willie Raskin) and a film of 1931. The
latter was inspired by Cole Porter's 1929 musical Fifty Million Frenchmen)
. Cf. Billy Rose and Willie Raskin
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
Poems (1913) "God's Garden"
7.74 Woody Guthrie (Woodrow Wilson Guthrie)
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1912-1967
This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York Island.
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
This Land is Your Land (1956 song)
8.0 H
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D. [the 17th Earl of Derby] is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid, and,
like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on
him! I hear he is called in London "genial Judas"!
Letter to Lady Haig, 14 Jan. 1918, in R. Blake Private Papers of Douglas
Haig (1952) ch. 16
Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement.
With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause,
each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our Homes and the
Freedom of mankind alike depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this
critical moment.
Order to British troops, 12 Apr. 1918, in A. Duff Cooper Haig (1936)
vol. 2, ch. 23
8.2 Lord Hailsham (Baron Hailsham, Quintin Hogg)
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1907-
A great party is not to be brought down because of a scandal by a woman of
easy virtue and a proved liar.
In BBC television interview on the Profumo affair, 13 June 1963, in The
Times 14 June 1963
If the British public falls for this [the programme of the Labour party],
I think it will be stark, raving bonkers.
In press conference at Conservative Central Office, 12 Oct. 1964, in The
Times 13 Oct. 1964
8.3 J. B. S. Haldane
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1892-1964
Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we
suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many
attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to
the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they
were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That
is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for
dreaming.
Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927) "Possible Worlds"
From the fact that there are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet,
but only 8,000 species of mammals, he [Haldane] concluded that the
Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles, and so we
might be more likely to meet them than any other type of animal on
a planet which would support life.
Report of lecture, 7 Apr. 1951, cited in Journal of the British
Interplanetary Society (1951) vol. 10, p. 156
8.4 H. R. Haldeman
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1929-
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back
in.
Comment to John Wesley Dean on Watergate affair, 8 Apr. 1973, in Hearings
Before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities of US
Senate: Watergate and Related Activities (1973) vol. 4, p. 1399
8.5 Sir William Haley
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1901-
It is a moral issue.
Heading of leading article on the Profumo affair, in The Times 11 June
1963
8.6 Henry Hall
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1899-1989
This is Henry Hall speaking, and tonight is my guest night.
Catch-phrase on BBC Radio's Guest Night from 1934 (see Henry Hall's Here's
to the Next Time (1955) ch. 11)
8.7 Sir Peter Hall
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1930-
Sir Peter [Hall] has always maintained that, although nobody appeared to
want a National Theatre when it was first promulgated, the public has
consistently supported it with cash at the box office--with "bottoms on
seats" to use his own earthy phrase.
Spectator 10 May 1980 (the phrase is often "bums on seats")
8.8 Margaret Halsey
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1910-
Englishwomen's shoes look as if they had been made by someone who had
often heard shoes described but had never seen any.
With Malice Toward Some (1938) pt. 2, p. 107
Towards people with whom they disagree the English gentry, or at any rate
that small cross section of them which I have seen, are tranquilly
good-natured. It is not comme il faut to establish the supremacy of an
idea by smashing in the faces of all the people who try to contradict it.
The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to
dinner.
With Malice Toward Some (1938) pt. 3, p. 208
8.9 Oscar Hammerstein II
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1895-1960
Climb ev'ry mountain, ford ev'ry stream
Follow ev'ry rainbow, till you find your dream!
Climb Ev'ry Mountain (1959 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
June is bustin' out all over.
Title of song (1945; music by Richard Rodgers)
The last time I saw Paris
Her heart was warm and gay,
I heard the laughter of her heart in ev'ry street caf‚.
The Last Time I saw Paris (1940 song; music by Jerome Kern)
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
An' it looks like it's climbin' clear up to the sky.
Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' (1943 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day!
I got a beautiful feelin'
Ev'rything's goin' my way.
Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' (1943 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
Ol' man river, dat ol' man river,
He must know sumpin', but don't say nothin',
He just keeps rollin',
He keeps on rollin' along.
Ol' Man River (1927 song; music by Jerome Kern)
Some enchanted evening,
You may see a stranger,
You may see a stranger,
Across a crowded room.
Some Enchanted Evening (1949 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
The hills are alive with the sound of music,
With songs they have sung for a thousand years.
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music,
My heart wants to sing ev'ry song it hears.
The Sound of Music (1959 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
There is nothin' like a dame.
Title of song (1949; music by Richard Rodgers)
You'll never walk alone.
Title of song (1945; music by Richard Rodgers)
8.10 Christopher Hampton
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1946-
Masturbation is the thinking man's television.
Philanthropist (1970) act. 1, sc. 3
If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process
whereby American girls turn into American women.
Savages (1974) sc. 16
8.11 Learned Hand
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1872-1961
A self-made man may prefer a self-made name.
In Bosley Crowther Lion's Share (1957) ch. 7 (referring to Samuel Goldfish
changing his name to Samuel Goldwyn)
High o'er the fence leaps Sunny Jim
"Force" is the food that raises him.
Advertising slogan (1903)
8.13 Brian Hanrahan
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1949-
I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid [on Port Stanley in
the Falkland Islands] but I counted them all out and I counted them all
back.
Report broadcast by BBC, 1 May 1982, in Battle for the Falklands (1982)
p. 21
8.14 Otto Harbach
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1873-1963
When a lovely flame dies,
Smoke gets in your eyes.
Smoke Gets in your Eyes (1933 song; music by Jerome Kern)
8.15 E. Y. 'Yip' Harburg
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1898-1981
Once I built a railroad. Now it's done--
Brother can you spare a dime?
Brother Can You Spare a Dime? (1932 song; music by Jay Gorney)
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Over the Rainbow (1939 song; music by Harold Arlen)
When I'm not near the girl I love,
I love the girl I'm near.
When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love (1947 song; music by Burton Lane)
Before he [Gilbert Harding] could go to New York he had to get a US visa
at the American consulate in Toronto. He was called upon to fill in a long
form with many questions, including "Is it your intention to overthrow the
Government of the United States by force?" By the time Harding got to that
one he was so irritated that he answered: "Sole purpose of visit."
W. Reyburn Gilbert Harding (1978) ch. 2
If, sir, I possessed, as you suggest, the power of conveying unlimited
sexual attraction through the potency of my voice, I would not be reduced
to accepting a miserable pittance from the BBC for interviewing a faded
female in a damp basement.
In S. Grenfell Gilbert Harding by his Friends (1961) p. 118 (reply to Mae
West's manager who asked "Can't you sound a bit more sexy when you
interview her?")
8.17 Warren G. Harding
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1865-1923
America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums but
normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.
Speech at Boston, 14 May 1920, in Frederick E. Schortemeier Rededicating
America (1920) ch. 17
8.18 Godfrey Harold Hardy
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1877-1947
Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for
ugly mathematics.
A Mathematician's Apology (1940) p. 25
8.19 Thomas Hardy
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1840-1928
A local thing called Christianity.
Dynasts (1904) pt. 1, act 1, sc. 6
My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor
reading.
Dynasts (1904) pt. 1, act 2, sc. 5
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
Hand of Ethelberta (1876) ch. 20
A piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written, in the
boy's hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried: "Done because we
are too menny."
Jude the Obscure (1896) pt. 6, ch. 2
The bower we shrined to Tennyson,
Gentlemen,
Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon
Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,
The spider is sole denizen;
Even she who voiced those rhymes is dust,
Gentlemen!
Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922) "An Ancient to Ancients"
This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly:
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at "The Travellers' Rest,"
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
And so do I.
Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922) "Weathers"
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate-bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.
Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922) "Weathers"
Life's little ironies.
Title of book (1894)
"Well, poor soul; she's helpless to hinder that or anything now," answered
Mother Cuxsom. "And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her
cupboards opened; and things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and
her little wishes and ways will all be as nothing!"
Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) ch. 18
One grievous failing of Elizabeth's was her occasional pretty and
picturesque use of dialect words--those terrible marks of the beast to the
truly genteel.
Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) ch. 20
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.
Moments of Vision (1917) "Heredity"
In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy
And the roof-lamp's oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
Or whence he came.
Moments of Vision (1917) "Midnight on the Great Western"
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
Moments of Vision (1917) "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'"
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things"?
Moments of Vision (1917) "Afterwards"
At once a voice outburst among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Poems of Past and Present (1902) "Darkling Thrush"
If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.
Poems of Past and Present (1902) "De Profundis"
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
Satires of Circumstance (1914) "Convergence of the Twain"
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything.
Satires of Circumstance (1914) "Convergence of the Twain"
When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.
Satires of Circumstance (1914) p. 20
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing grey,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?
Satires of Circumstance (1914) "Men Who March Away"
"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean
phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) ch. 59
Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.
Time's Laughing Stocks (1909) "Let me Enjoy"
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.
Time's Laughing Stocks (1909) "Man he Killed"
Good, but not religious-good.
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) ch. 2
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
Winter Words (1928) "He Never Expected Much"
"Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.
Winter Words (1928) "Christmas: 1924"
8.20 Maurice Evan Hare
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1886-1967
There once was an old man who said, "Damn!
It is borne in upon me I am
An engine that moves
In determinate grooves,
I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram."
Limerick (1905)
8.21 Robertson Hare
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1891-1979
Oh, calamity!
Catch-phrase, in Yours Indubitably (1956) p. 32
8.22 W. F. Hargreaves
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1846-1919
I'm Burlington Bertie
I rise at ten thirty and saunter along like a toff,
I walk down the Strand with my gloves on my hand,
Then I walk down again with them off.
Burlington Bertie from Bow (1915 song)
I acted so tragic the house rose like magic,
The audience yelled "You're sublime."
They made me a present of Mornington Crescent
They threw it a brick at a time.
The Night I Appeared as Macbeth (1922 song)
8.23 Lord Harlech (David Ormsby Gore)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-1985
In the end it may well be that Britain will be honoured by historians more
for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she
acquired it.
In New York Times 28 Oct. 1962, sec. 4, p. 11
8.24 Jimmy Harper, Will E. Haines, and Tommie Connor
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The biggest aspidistra in the world.
Title of song (1938; popularized by Gracie Fields)
8.25 Frank Harris (James Thomas Harris)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1856-1931
Christ went deeper than I have, but I've had a wider range of experience.
In conversation with Hugh Kingsmill, in Hesketh Pearson and Malcolm
Muggeridge About Kingsmill (1951) ch. 3
Sex is the gateway to life.
In Enid Bagnold Autobiography (1969) ch. 4
8.26 H. H. Harris
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Bovril....Prevents that sinking feeling.
Advertising slogan (1920)
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered.
Title of song (1941; music by Richard Rodgers)
When love congeals
It soon reveals
The faint aroma of performing seals,
The double crossing of a pair of heels.
I wish I were in love again!
I Wish I Were in Love Again (1937 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
I get too hungry for dinner at eight.
I like the theatre, but never come late.
I never bother with people I hate.
That's why the lady is a tramp.
The Lady is a Tramp (1937 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
On the first of May
It is moving day;
Spring is here, so blow your job--
Throw your job away;
Now's the time to trust
To your wanderlust.
In the city's dust you wait.
Must you wait?
Just you wait:
In a mountain greenery
Where God paints the scenery--
Just two crazy people together;
While you love your lover, let
Blue skies be your coverlet--
When it rains we'll laugh at the weather.
Mountain Greenery (1926 song; music by Richard Rodgers)
8.28 Moss Hart and George Kaufman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Moss Hart 1904-1961
George Kaufman 1889-1961
You can't take it with you.
Title of play (1936)
8.29 L. P. Hartley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-1972
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
The Go-Between (1953) prologue
8.30 F. W. Harvey
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-?
From troubles of the world
I turn to ducks
Beautiful comical things.
Ducks and Other Verses (1919) "Ducks"
8.31 Minnie Louise Haskins
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1957
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light
that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied:
"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That
shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."
Desert (1908) "God Knows"
8.32 Lord Haw-Haw
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
See William Joyce (10.28)
8.33 Ian Hay (John Hay Beith)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1952
What do you mean, funny? Funny-peculiar or funny ha-ha?
Housemaster (1938) act 3
8.34 J. Milton Hayes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1884-1940
There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town,
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.
The Green Eye of the Yellow God (1911)
8.35 Lee Hazlewood
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-
These boots are made for walkin'.
Title of song (1966)
That part of his [Sir Geoffrey Howe's] speech was rather like being
savaged by a dead sheep.
Hansard 14 June 1978, col. 1027
I plan to be the Gromyko of the Labour Party.
In Sunday Times 5 Feb. 1984
I warn you there are going to be howls of anguish from the 80,000 people
who are rich enough to pay over 75% [tax] on the last slice of their
income.
Speech at Labour Party Conference, 1 Oct. 1973, in The Times 2 Oct. 1973
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Death of a Naturalist (1966) "Digging"
All agog at the plasterer on his ladder
Skimming our gable and writing our name there
With his trowel point, letter by strange letter.
The Haw Lantern (1987) "Alphabets"
Who would connive
in civilised outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
North (1975) "Punishment"
The famous
Northern reticence, the tight gag of place
And times: yes, yes. Of the "wee six" I sing
Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.
North (1975) "Whatever You Say Say Nothing"
Is there a life before death? That's chalked up
In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup,
We hug our little destiny again.
North (1975) "Whatever You Say Say Nothing"
Don't be surprised
If I demur, for, be advised
My passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.
Open Letter (Field Day pamphlet no. 2, 1983) p. 9 (rebuking the editors
of The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry for including his work)
8.38 Edward Heath
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1916-
It is the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.
Hansard 15 May 1973, col. 1243 (on the Lonrho affair)
The alternative is to break into the wage/price spiral by acting directly
to reduce prices. This can be done by reducing those taxes which bear
directly on prices and costs, such as the selective employment tax, and by
taking a firm grip on public sector prices and charges such as coal,
steel, gas, electricity, transport charges and postal charges. This
would, at a stroke, reduce the rise in prices, increase production and
reduce unemployment.
Press release, 16 June 1970, in The Times 17 June 1970
8.39 Fred Heatherton
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I've got a loverly bunch of cocoanuts,
There they are a-standing in a row,
Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head,
Give 'em a twist, a flick of the wrist,
That's what the showman said.
I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts (1944 song; revised version 1948)
8.40 Robert A. Heinlein
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-
"Oh, 'tanstaafl.' Means 'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' And
isn't," I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, "or these
drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free
costs twice as much in the long run or turns out worthless."
Moon is Harsh Mistress (1966) ch. 11
8.41 Werner Heisenberg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1901-1976
Ein Fachmann ist ein Mann, der einige der gr”bsten Fehler kennt, die man
in dem betreffenden Fach machen kann und der sie deshalb zu vermeiden
versteht.
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made
in his subject and how to avoid them.
Der Teil und das Ganze ("The Part and the Whole," 1969) ch. 17
(translated by A. J. Pomerans in 1971 as Physics and Beyond)
8.42 Joseph Heller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1923-
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that
a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and
immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be
grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no
longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to
fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly
them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't
want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the
absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful
whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
Catch-22 (1961) ch. 5 (the first chapter of this novel was published as
Catch-18 in New World Writing (1955) No. 7--see Kiley and MacDonald
"Catch-22" Casebook (1973) 294)
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have
mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
Catch-22 (1961) ch. 9. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 489:14
Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it
necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth-decay in His
divine system of creation?
Catch-22 (1961) ch. 18
"You put so much stock in winning wars," the grubby iniquitous old man
scoffed. "The real trick lies in losing wars, and in knowing which wars
can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just see how
splendidly we've done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual
state of crisis. Germany loses and prospers. Look at our own recent
history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious
trouble. Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped
start a world war we hadn't a chance of winning. But now that we are
losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will
certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated."
Catch-22 (1961) ch. 23
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
The Little Foxes (1939) act 1
I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever seen
any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper
authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in
order to save myself is to me inhuman and indecent and dishonorable.
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even
though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person
and could have no comfortable place in any political group.
Letter to John S. Wood, 19 May 1952, in US Congress Committee Hearing on
Un-American Activities (1952) pt. 8, p. 3546
8.44 Sir Robert Helpmann
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1909-1986
No. You see there are portions of the human anatomy which would keep
swinging after the music had finished.
In Elizabeth Salter Helpmann (1978) ch. 21 [reply to question on whether
the fashion for nudity would extend to dance]
8.45 Ernest Hemingway
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1899-1961
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really
happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all
that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and
the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places
and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to
people, then you are a writer.
Esquire Dec. 1934 "Old Newsman Writes"
"Just kiss me."
She kissed him on the cheek.
"No."
"Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go."
"Look, turn thy head" and then their mouths were tight together.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) ch. 7
He said, "Maria...I feel as though I wanted to die when I am loving
thee."
"Oh," she said. "I die each time. Do you not die?"
"No. Almost. But did thee feel the earth move?"
"Yes. As I died. Put thy arm around me, please."
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) ch. 13
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called
Huckleberry Finn.
Green Hills of Africa (1935) ch. 1
Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of
ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
Men at War (1942)
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then
wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is
a movable feast.
Movable Feast (1964) epigraph
"Exactly what do you mean by 'guts'?" "I mean," Ernest Hemingway said,
"grace under pressure."
Interview with Dorothy Parker, in New Yorker 30 Nov. 1929
I started out very quiet and I beat Mr Turgenev. Then I trained hard and
I beat Mr de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr Stendhal, and
I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any
ring with Mr Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.
New Yorker 13 May 1950
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) p. 103
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit
detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
Paris Review Spring 1958
The sun also rises.
Title of novel (1926)
Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than
sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the
cuckoo clock style of architecture.
Toronto Star Weekly 4 Mar. 1922, in William White By-line: Ernest
Hemingway (1967) p. 18 See also F. Scott Fitzgerald (6.20)
8.46 Arthur W. D. Henley
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Nobody loves a fairy when she's forty.
Title of song (1934)
8.47 O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1862-1910
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
Four Million (1906) "Gift of the Magi"
If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never
marry.
Four Million (1906) "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog"
It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.
Gentle Grafter (1908) "Octopus Marooned"
Turn up the lights; I don't want to go home in the dark.
Last words, quoting 1907 song by Harry Williams "I'm afraid to come home
in the dark," in Charles Alphonso Smith O. Henry Biography (1916) ch. 9
8.48 A. P. Herbert
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1971
Other people's babies--
That's my life!
Mother to dozens,
And nobody's wife.
Ballads for Broadbrows (1930) "Other People's Babies" (also a 1934 song,
with music by Vivian Ellis)
Let's find out what everyone is doing,
And then stop everyone from doing it.
Ballads for Broadbrows (1930) "Let's Stop Somebody from Doing Something!"
As my poor father used to say
In 1863,
Once people start on all this Art
Goodbye, moralitee!
And what my father used to say
Is good enough for me.
Ballads for Broadbrows (1930) "Lines for a Worthy Person"
Holy deadlock.
Title of novel (1934)
Don't tell my mother I'm living in sin,
Don't let the old folks know.
Laughing Ann (1925) "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living in Sin"
Not huffy, or stuffy, not tiny or tall,
But fluffy, just fluffy, with no brains at all.
Plain Jane (1927) "I Like them Fluffy"
Don't let's go to the dogs tonight,
For mother will be there.
She-Shanties (1926) "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight"
The Farmer will never be happy again;
He carries his heart in his boots;
For either the rain is destroying his grain
Or the drought is destroying his roots.
Tinker Tailor (1922) "The Farmer"
This high official, all allow,
Is grossly overpaid;
There wasn't any Board, and now
There isn't any Trade.
Tinker Tailor (1922) "The President of the Board of Trade"
Nothing is wasted, nothing is in vain:
The seas roll over but the rocks remain.
Tough at the Top (circa 1949 operetta), in A.P.H. (1970) ch. 7
The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical
figure--the figure of "The Reasonable Man."
Uncommon Law (1935) "The Reasonable Man"
People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no
reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.
Uncommon Law (1935) "Is it a Free Country?"
The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time.
Uncommon Law (1935) "Is Marriage Lawful?"
The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose.
Uncommon Law (1935) "Fox-Hunting Fun"
Milord, in that case an Act of God was defined as "something which no
reasonable man could have expected."
Uncommon Law (1935) "Act of God"
8.49 Oliver Herford
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1863-1935
"Perhaps it is only a whim," said the Queen. The King laughed mirthlessly.
"King Barumph has a whim of iron!"
Excuse it Please (1929) "Impossible Pudding"
See also Ethel Watts Mumford (13.139)
8.50 Jerry Herman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1933-
Hello, Dolly, well, hello Dolly
It's so nice to have you back where you belong.
Hello, Dolly (1964 song from the musical Hello, Dolly)
8.51 June Hershey
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Deep in the heart of Texas.
Title of song (1941; music by Don Swander)
8.52 Hermann Hesse
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1877-1962
Wenn wir einen Menschen hassen, so hassen wir in seinem Bild etwas, was in
uns selber sisst. Was nicht in uns selber ist, das regt uns nicht auf.
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.
What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Demian (1919) ch. 6
Auf Kosten der Intensit„t also erreicht er [der BЃrger ] Erhaltung und
Sicherheit, statt Gottbesessenheit erntet er Gewissensruhe, statt Lust
Behagen, statt Freiheit Bequemlichkeit, statt t”dlicher Glut eine
angenehme Temperatur.
The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and
a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
Der Steppenwolf (1927) "Tractat vom Steppenwolf" (Treatise on the
Steppenwolf)
8.53 Gordon Hewart (Viscount Hewart)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1943
A long line of cases shows that it is not merely of some importance, but
is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but
should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.
Rex v Sussex Justices, 9 Nov. 1923, in Law Reports King's Bench Division
(1924) vol. 1, p. 259
It is obvious from our polling, as well as from the doorstep, that the
"London Effect" is now very noticeable. The "loony Labour left" is taking
its toll; the gays and lesbians issue is costing us dear among the
pensioners, and fear of extremism and higher rates/taxes is particularly
prominent in the Greater London Council area.
Letter to Frank Dobson and other Labour leaders, in The Times 6 Mar. 1987
8.55 Du Bose Heyward and Ira Gershwin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Du Bose Heyward 1885-1940
Ira Gershwin 1896-1983
It ain't necessarily so.
Title of song (1935; music by George Gershwin)
Summer time an' the livin' is easy.
Summer Time (1935 song; music by George Gershwin)
8.56 Sir Seymour Hicks
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1871-1949
You will recognize, my boy, the first sign of old age: it is when you go
out into the streets of London and realize for the first time how young
the policemen look.
In C. R. D. Pulling They Were Singing (1952) ch. 7
8.57 Jack Higgins (Henry Patterson)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-
The eagle has landed.
Title of novel (1975)
8.58 Joe Hill
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1915
I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in
mourning--organize.
Farewell telegram to Bill Haywood, 18 Nov. 1915, before his death by
firing squad, in Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune 19 Nov. 1915
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
Songs of the Workers (Industrial Workers of the World, 1911) "Preacher
and the Slave"
8.59 Pattie S. Hill
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1946
Happy birthday to you.
Title of song (1935; music by Mildred J. Hill)
8.60 Sir Edmund Hillary
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1919-
[After the ascent of Everest] George [Lowe] met us with a mug of soup just
above camp, and seeing his stalwart frame and cheerful face reminded me
how fond of him I was. My comment was not specially prepared for public
consumption but for George...."Well, we knocked the bastard off!" I told
him and he nodded with pleasure...."Thought you must have!"
Nothing Venture (1975) ch. 10
8.61 Fred Hillebrand
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-
Home James, and don't spare the horses.
Title of song (1934)
8.62 Lady Hillingdon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1857-1940
I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of
old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week and when I hear his steps
outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and
think of England.
Journal 1912, in J. Gathorne-Hardy Rise and Fall of the British Nanny
(1972) ch. 3
8.63 James Hilton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1954
Nothing really wrong with him--only anno domini, but that's the most fatal
complaint of all, in the end.
Goodbye, Mr Chips (1934) ch. 1
8.64 Alfred Hitchcock
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1980
Television has brought back murder into the home--where it belongs.
In Observer 19 Dec. 1965
Actors are cattle.
In Saturday Evening Post 22 May 1943, p. 56
8.65 Adolf Hitler
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1945
Die neue and diesmal blutige Erhebung--die Nacht der langen Messer, wie
man sie grauenvoll bezeichnete--meinem eigenen Sinn entspr„che.
The new, and this time bloody, rising--"The Night of the Long Knives" was
their ghastly name for it--was exactly what I myself desired.
Speech to the Reichstag, 13 July 1934, in Max Domarus (ed.) Hitler: Reden
und Proklamationen 1932-1945 (1962) p. 418
Ich gehe mit traumwandlerischer Sicherheit den Weg, den mich die Vorsehung
gehen heisst.
I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.
Speech in Munich, 15 Mar. 1936, in Max Domarus (ed.) Hitler: Reden und
Proklamationen 1932-1945 (1962) p. 606
Und nun steht vor uns das letzte Problem, das gel”stwerden muss und gel”st
werden wird! Es [das Sudetenland] ist die letzte territoriale Forderung,
die ich Europa zu stellen habe, aber es ist die Forderung, von der ich
nicht abgehe, und die ich, so Gott will, erfЃllen werde.
And now before us stands the last problem that must be solved and will be
solved. It [the Sudetenland] is the last territorial claim which I have to
make in Europe, but it is the claim from which I will not recede and
which, God-willing, I will make good.
Speech at Berlin Sportpalast, 26 Sept. 1938, in Max Domarus (ed.) Hitler:
Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945 (1962) p. 927
In bezug auf das sudetendeutsche Problem meine Geduld jetzt zu Ende ist!
With regard to the problem of the Sudeten Germans, my patience is now at
an end!
Speech at Berlin Sportpalast, 26 Sept. 1938, in Max Domarus (ed.) Hitler:
Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945 (1962) p. 932
Brennt Paris?
Is Paris burning?
Question, 25 Aug. 1944, in Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre Is Paris
Burning? (1965) ch. 5
Die breite Masse eines Volkes...einer grossen LЃgeleichter zum Opfer f„llt
als einer kleinen.
The broad mass of a nation...will more easily fall victim to a big lie
than to a small one.
Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925) vol. 1, ch. 10
8.66 Ralph Hodgson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1871-1962
Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?
Poems (1917) "Time, You Old Gipsy Man"
I climbed a hill as light fell short,
And rooks came home in scramble sort,
And filled the trees and flapped and fought
And sang themselves to sleep.
Poems (1917) "Song of Honour"
I stood and stared; the sky was lit,
The sky was stars all over it,
I stood, I knew not why,
Without a wish, without a will,
I stood upon that silent hill
And stared into the sky until
My eyes were blind with stars and still
I stared into the sky.
Poems (1917) "Song of Honour"
When stately ships are twirled and spun
Like whipping tops and help there's none
And mighty ships ten thousand ton
Go down like lumps of lead.
Poems (1917) "Song of Honour"
'Twould ring the bells of Heaven
The wildest peal for years,
If Parson lost his senses
And people came to theirs,
And he and they together
Knelt down with angry prayers
For tamed and shabby tigers
And dancing dogs and bears,
And wretched, blind, pit ponies,
And little hunted hares.
Poems (1917) "Bells of Heaven"
See an old unhappy bull,
Sick in soul and body both,
Slouching in the undergrowth
Of the forest beautiful,
Banished from the herd he led,
Bulls and cows a thousand head.
Poems (1917) "The Bull"
Reason has moons, but moons not hers,
Lie mirror'd on her sea,
Confounding her astronomers,
But, O! delighting me.
Poems (1917) "Reason Has Moons"
I blow through here;
the music goes 'round and around.
Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, and it comes up here.
Music Goes 'round and Around (1935 song; music by Edward Farley and
Michael Riley)
8.68 Eric Hoffer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1983
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbour.
New York Times Magazine 15 Feb. 1959, p. 12
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each
other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of
a protest.
Passionate State of Mind (1955) p. 21
8.69 Al Hoffman and Dick Manning
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations.
There is a French widow in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects.
Speech at Oxford Union, 4 Dec. 1958 (supposedly quoting a letter from
a Tyrolean landlord)
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The
spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men
who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
Science for the Citizen (1938) epilogue
8.72 Billie Holiday (Eleanor Fagan) and Arthur Herzog Jr.
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Billie Holiday 1915-1959
Arthur Herzog Jr. 1901-1983
Them that's got shall get,
Them that's not shall lose,
So the Bible said,
And it still is news;
Mama may have, papa may have,
But God bless the child that's got his own!
That's got his own.
God Bless the Child (1941 song)
8.73 Stanley Holloway
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1890-1982
Sam, Sam, pick up tha' musket.
Pick Up Tha' Musket (1930 recorded monologue)
8.74 John H. Holmes
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1879-1964
This, now, is the judgement of our scientific age--the third reaction of
man upon the universe! This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it
friendly. It is simply indifferent.
The Sensible Man's View of Religion (1932) ch. 4
8.75 Lord Home (Baron Home of the Hirsel, formerly Sir Alec Douglas-Home)
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1903-
As far as the fourteenth earl is concerned, I suppose Mr [Harold] Wilson,
when you come to think of it, is the fourteenth Mr Wilson.
Television interview, 21 Oct. 1963, in Daily Telegraph 22 Oct. 1963
(replying to question on how he was going to meet attacks by the Labour
Party on his then position as a "fourteenth Earl, a reactionary, and an
out-of-date figure")
When I have to read economic documents I have to have a box of matches and
start moving them into position to simplify and illustrate the points to
myself.
In Observer 16 Sept. 1962
8.76 Arthur Honegger
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1892-1955
Il est certain que la premiЉre qualit‚ d'un compositeur, c'est d'€tre
mort.
There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
Je suis compositeur (I am a Composer, 1951) p. 16
8.77 Herbert Hoover
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1874-1964
Older men declare war. But it is youth who must fight and die. And it is
youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs that
are the aftermath of war.
Speech at the Republican National Convention, Chicago, 27 June 1944, in
Addresses upon the American Road (1946) p. 254.
Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic
experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose (i.e. 18th
Amendment on Prohibition).
Letter to Senator W. H. Borah, 23 Feb. 1928, in Claudius O. Johnson Borah
of Idaho (1936) ch. 21
When the war closed...we were challenged with a peace-time choice between
the American system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of
diametrically opposed doctrines--doctrines of paternalism and state
socialism.
Speech in New York City, 22 Oct. 1928, in New Day (1928) p. 154
Another proposal of our opponents which would wholly alter our American
system of life is to reduce the protective tariff to a competitive tariff
for revenue....The grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities,
a thousand towns; the weeds will overrun the fields of millions of farms
if that protection be taken away.
Speech, 31 Oct. 1932, in State Papers of Herbert Hoover (1934) vol. 2,
p. 418
8.78 Anthony Hope (Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins)
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1863-1933
Economy is going without something you do want in case you should, some
day, want something you probably won't want.
Dolly Dialogues (1894) no. 12
"You oughtn't to yield to temptation." "Well, somebody must, or the thing
becomes absurd," said I.
Dolly Dialogues (1894) no. 14
"Bourgeois," I observed, "is an epithet which the riff-raff apply to what
is respectable, and the aristocracy to what is decent." "But it's not
a nice thing to be, all the same," said Dolly, who is impervious to the
most penetrating remark.
Dolly Dialogues (1894) no. 17
I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my
conversation.
Dolly Dialogues (1894) no. 22
Anthony Hope--a friend, a true friend, yet pledged always to his own and
far more Attic interpretation of life--sat there [at the first night of J.
M. Barrie's Peter Pan in 1904] looking primmer and drier at every
extravagance, and more and more as if, in his opinion, children should be
kept in their right place. When he spoke, his comment was also far more
succinct. "Oh, for an hour of Herod!" he said.
Denis Mackail Story of JMB (1941) ch. 17
8.79 Bob Hope
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1903-
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't
need it.
In Alan Harrington Life in the Crystal Palace (1959) "The Tyranny of
Farms"
8.80 Francis Hope
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1938-1974
And scribbled lines like fallen hopes
On backs of tattered envelopes.
Instead of a Poet and Other Poems (1965) "Instead of a Poet"
Less than the dust, beneath thy Chariot wheel,
Less than the rust, that never stained thy Sword,
Less than the trust thou hast in me, Oh, Lord,
Even less than these!
Less than the weed, that grows beside thy door,
Less than the speed, of hours, spent far from thee,
Less than the need thou hast in life of me.
Even less am I.
Garden of Kama (1901) "Less than the Dust"
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?
...Pale hands, pink tipped, like lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat
Crushing out life; than waving me farewell!
Garden of Kama (1901) "Kashmiri Song"
8.83 A. E. Housman
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1859-1936
Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my legs.
Fragment of a Greek Tragedy (Bromsgrovian vol. 2, no. 5, 1883) in Alfred
Edward Housman, the Housman Memorial Supplement of the Bromsgrovian (1936
)
This great College, of this ancient University, has seen some strange
sights. It has seen Wordsworth drunk and Porson sober. And here am I,
a better poet than Porson, and a better scholar than Wordsworth, betwixt
and between.
Speech at Trinity College, Cambridge, in G. K. Chesterton Autobiography
(1936) ch. 12
If I were the Prince of Peace, I would choose a less provocative
Ambassador.
In Alan Wood Bertrand Russell: Passionate Sceptic (1957) p. 103
Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.
'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.
Collected Poems (1939) "Additional Poems" no. 18
That is indeed very good. I shall have to repeat that on the Golden Floor!
In Daily Telegraph 21 Feb. 1984 (said to his physician who told him
a risqu‚ story to cheer him up just before he died)
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
He has been eaten by the bear.
Infant Innocence in Oxford Book of Light Verse (1938) p. 489
Nous n'irons plus aux bois,
Les lauriers sont coup‚s.
We'll go to the woods no more,
The laurels all are cut.
Translation of nursery rhyme in Last Poems (1922) introductory
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.
Last Poems (1922) no. 9
May will be fine next year as like as not:
Oh, ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.
Last Poems (1922) no. 9
We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.
Last Poems (1922) no. 9
The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
Last Poems (1922) no. 9
But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.
Last Poems (1922) no. 10
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Last Poems (1922) no. 12
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
Last Poems (1922) no. 12
The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders what's to pay.
Last Poems (1922) no. 21
To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long 'tis like to be.
Last Poems (1922) no. 35
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
Last Poems (1922) no. 37
For nature, heartless, witless nature,
Will neither care nor know
What stranger's feet may find the meadow
And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
If they are mine or no.
Last Poems (1922) no. 40
Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch
over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my
skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act....The seat of this
sensation is the pit of the stomach.
Lecture at Cambridge, 9 May 1933, The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933)
p. 47
The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orion plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases,
And I lie down alone.
More Poems (1936) no. 11
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
More Poems (1936) no. 36
Good-night. Ensured release
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While earth's foundations stand
And sky and sea and land
And heaven endures.
More Poems (1936) no. 48 "Alta Quies"
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 2
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 4
And naked to the hangman's noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 9
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies,
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 13
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well I did behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 18
In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 21
"Come all to church, good people,"--
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 21
The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair,
There's men from the barn and the forge and the mill and the fold,
The lads for the girls and the lads for the liquor are there,
And there with the rest are the lads that will never be old.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 23
Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 27
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The wind it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 31
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 31
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 32
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 32
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 40
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 41
Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 50, epigraph
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 54
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 62
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 62
I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 62
8.84 Sidney Howard
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Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not
believe you anyway.
Motto Book (1907) p. 31
Life is just one damned thing after another.
Philistine Dec. 1909, p. 32. The saying is often attributed to Frank Ward
O'Malley
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate
the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
Roycroft Dictionary (1914) p. 46
Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the
commonplace.
Thousand and One Epigrams (1911) p. 133
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the
work of one extraordinary man.
Thousand and One Epigrams (1911) p. 151
8.86 Frank McKinney ('Kin') Hubbard
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1868-1930
Classic music is th'kind that we keep thinkin'll turn into a tune.
Comments of Abe Martin and His Neighbors (1923)
It's no disgrace t'be poor, but it might as well be.
Short Furrows (1911) p. 42
8.87 L. Ron Hubbard
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1911-1986
Hubbard...told us that writing science fiction for about a penny a word
was no way to make a living. If you really want to make a million, he
said, the quickest way is to start your own religion.
Sam Moscowitz recalling Hubbard speaking to the Eastern Science Fiction
Association at Newark, New Jersey, in 1947, in B. Corydon and L. Ron
Hubbard Jr. L. Ron Hubbard (1987) ch. 3
8.88 Howard Hughes Jr.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-1976
That man's ears make him look like a taxi-cab with both doors open.
In Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg Celluloid Muse (1969) p. 156
(describing Clark Gable)
8.89 Jimmy Hughes and Frank Lake
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bless 'em all! Bless 'em all!
The long and the short and the tall.
Bless 'Em All (1940 song)
"It's powerful," he said.
"What?"
"That one drop of Negro blood--because just one drop of black blood
makes a man coloured. One drop--you are a Negro!"
Simple Takes a Wife (1953) p. 85
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes.
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow
I'll sit at the table
When company comes
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then.
Besides, they'll see how
beautiful I am
And be ashamed,--
I, too, am America.
Survey Graphic Mar. 1925, "I, Too"
[Josephine Hull's] stage reminiscences are not the least of her charms.
"Shakespeare," she recalls, "is so tiring. You never get a chance to sit
down unless you're a king."
Time 16 Nov. 1953, p. 90
There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to
enforce a law not supported by the people.
Speech at Williamsburg, 1 May 1965, in New York Times 2 May 1965, sec. 1,
p. 34
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken
seriously.
Speech to National Student Association at Madison, 23 Aug. 1965, in New
York Times 24 Aug. 1965, p. 12
And here we are, just as we ought to be, here we are, the people, here we
are in a spirit of dedication, here we are the way politics ought to be in
America, the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the
politics of joy.
Speech in Washington, 27 Apr. 1968, in New York Times 28 Apr. 1968, p. 66
8.94 Herman Hupfeld
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1894-1951
You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh;
The fundamental things apply,
As time goes by.
As Time Goes By (1931 song)
Christlike in my behaviour,
Like every good believer,
I imitate the Saviour,
And cultivate a beaver.
Antic Hay (1923) ch. 4
There are few who would not rather be taken in adultery than in
provincialism.
Antic Hay (1923) ch. 10
Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of
the country in which the office is held.
Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934) p. 34
The sexophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon.
Brave New World (1932) ch. 5
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most
important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
Collected Essays (1959) "Case of Voluntary Ignorance"
The proper study of mankind is books.
Crome Yellow (1921) ch. 28
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body.
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely
consistent people are the dead.
Do What You Will (1929) "Wordsworth in the Tropics"
The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that
the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.
Ends and Means(1937) ch. 1
So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons
will duly arise and make them miserable.
Ends and Means (1937) ch. 8
Chastity--the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions, he added
parenthetically, out of Remy de Gourmont.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936) ch. 27
"Death," said Mark Staithes. "It's the only thing we haven't succeeded in
completely vulgarizing."
Eyeless in Gaza (1936) ch. 31
"Bed," as the Italian proverb succinctly puts it, "is the poor man's
opera."
Heaven and Hell (1956) p. 41
A million million spermatozoa,
All of them alive:
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.
And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be
Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne--
But the One was Me.
Leda (1920) "Fifth Philosopher's Song"
Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Leda (1920) "Ninth Philosopher's Song"
Then brim the bowl with atrabilious liquor!
We'll pledge our Empire vast across the flood:
For Blood, as all men know, than Water's thicker,
But Water's wider, thank the Lord, than Blood.
Leda (1920) "Ninth Philosopher's Song"
Ragtime...but when the wearied Band
Swoons to a waltz, I take her hand,
And there we sit in peaceful calm,
Quietly sweating palm to palm.
Leda (1920) "Frascati's"
I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There
is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.
Limbo (1920) "Cynthia"
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is
music.
Music at Night (1931) p. 17
"And besides," he added, forgetting that several excuses are always less
convincing than one, "Lady Edward's inviting an American editor specially
for my sake."
Point Counter Point (1928) ch. 1
A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as
sincerely from the author's soul.
Point Counter Point (1928) ch. 13
There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no
avail.
Point Counter Point (1928) ch. 13
Brought up in an epoch when ladies apparently rolled along on wheels, Mr
Quarles was peculiarly susceptible to calves.
Point Counter Point (1928) ch. 20
Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms.
Point Counter Point (1928) ch. 28
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no
sane human being has ever given his assent.
Proper Studies (1927) "The Idea of Equality"
Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally
those who achieve something.
Proper Studies (1927) "Note on Dogma"
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Proper Studies (1927) "Note on Dogma"
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what
happens to him.
Texts and Pretexts (1932) p. 5
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for
granted.
Themes and Variations (1950) "Variations on a Philosopher"
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving,
and that's your own self. Your own self," he repeated. So you have to
begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards,
when you've worked on your own corner.
Time Must Have a Stop (1945) ch. 7
8.96 Sir Julian Huxley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1975
Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last
fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.
Religion without Revelation (1957 edn.) ch. 3
9.0 I
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Il vaut mieux mourir debout que de vivre … genoux!
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Speech in Paris, 3 Sept. 1936, in L'Humanit‚ 4 Sept. 1936 (also attributed
to Emiliano Zapata)
No pasar n.
They shall not pass.
Radio broadcast, Madrid, 19 July 1936, in Speeches and Articles 1936-38
(1938) p. 7 (cf. Anonymous 6:25)
9.2 Henrik Ibsen
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1828-1906
Luftslotte,--de er s† nemme at ty ind i, de. Og nemme at bygge ogs†.
Castles in the air--they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to
build, too.
Bygmester Solness (The Master Builder, 1892) act 3
Flertallet har aldrig retten p† sin side. Aldrig, siger jeg! Det er en af
disse samfundslнgne, som en fri, t‘nkende mand m† gнre oprнr imod. Hvem er
det, som udgнr flertallet af beboerne i et land? Er det de kloge folk,
eller er det dЉ dumme? Jeg taenker, vi f†r vaere enige om, at dumme
mennesker er tilstede i en ganske forskraek kelig overv‘ldende majoritet
rundt omkring p† den hele vide jord. Men det kan da vel, for fanden,
aldrig i evighed vaere ret, at de dumme skal herske over de kloge!
The majority never has right on its side. Never I say! That is one of the
social lies that a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes
up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I
think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming
majority, all the wide world over.
En Folkefiende (An Enemy of the People, 1882) act 4
En skulde aldrig ha' sine bedste buxer p†, n†r en er ude og strider for
frihed og sandhed.
You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for
freedom and truth.
En Folkefiende (An Enemy of the People, 1882) act 5
Sagen er den, ser I, at den st‘rkeste mand i verden, det er han, som st†r
mest alene.
The thing is, you see, that the strongest man in the world is the man who
stands most alone.
En Folkefiende (An Enemy of the People, 1882) act 5
Mor, gi' mig solen.
Mother, give me the sun.
Gengangere (Ghosts, 1881) act 3
Men, gud sig forbarme,--sligt noget gнr man da ikke!
But good God, people don't do such things!
Hedda Gabler (1890) act 4
Hvad skal manden v‘re? Sig selv, det er mit korte svar.
What ought a man to be? Well, my short answer is "himself."
Peer Gynt (1867) act 4
Tar de livslнgnen fra et gennemsnitsmenneske, s† tar De lykken fra ham med
det samme.
Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take
away his happiness.
Vildanden (The Wild Duck, 1884) act 5
9.3 Harold L. Ickes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1952
The trouble with Senator Long...is that he is suffering from halitosis of
the intellect. That's presuming Emperor Long has an intellect.
Speech, 1935, in G. Wolfskill and J. A. Hudson All But the People:
Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Critics, 1933-39 (1969) ch. 11
Dewey threw his diaper into the ring.
On the Republican candidate for the presidency, in New York Times 12 Dec.
1939, p. 32
9.4 Eric Idle
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1943-
See Graham Chapman et al. (3.47)
9.5 Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1970
It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife
that Dr Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious
business.
Malice Aforethought (1931) p. 7
9.6 Ivan Illich
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-
Man must choose whether to be rich in things or in the freedom to use
them.
Deschooling Society (1971) ch. 4
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the
prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
Tools for Conviviality (1973) ch. 3
9.7 Charles Inge
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1868-1957
This very remarkable man
Commends a most practical plan:
You can do what you want
If you don't think you can't,
So don't think you can't think you can.
Weekend Book (1928) "On Monsieur Cou‚"
9.8 William Ralph Inge (Dean Inge)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1954
The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.
"The Training of the Reason" in A. C. Benson (ed.) Cambridge Essays on
Education (1917) ch. 2
The enemies of Freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.
End of an Age (1948) ch. 4
The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is
a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static
Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.
End of an Age (1948) ch. 6
To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to
enslave a philosophy.
Idea of Progress (Romanes Lecture delivered at Oxford, 27 May 1920) p. 9
Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when
they are only repelled by man.
More Lay Thoughts of a Dean (1931) pt. 4, ch. 1
It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the
sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf
remains of a different opinion.
Outspoken Essays: First Series (1919) "Patriotism"
The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have
been small states--Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.
Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922) "State, visible and invisible"
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it; and
he cannot avow that the bayonets are meant to keep his own subjects quiet.
Philosophy of Plotinus (1923) vol. 2, lecture 22
Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.
Victorian Age (Rede Lecture delivered at Cambridge, 1922) p. 49
Tu ne pr‚vois les ‚v‚nements que lorsqu'ils sont d‚j… arriv‚s.
You can only predict things after they have happened.
Le Rhinoc‚ros (1959) act 3
Un fonctionnaire ne plaisante pas.
A civil servant doesn't make jokes.
Tueur sans gages (The Killer, 1958) act 1
9.10 Weldon J. Irvine
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Young, gifted and black.
Title of song (1969; music by Nina Simone)
9.11 Christopher Isherwood
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1904-1986
The common cormorant (or shag)
Lays eggs inside a paper bag,
You follow the idea, no doubt?
It's to keep the lightning out.
But what these unobservant birds
Have never thought of, is that herds
Of wandering bears might come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.
Exhumations (1966) "Common Cormorant"
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not
thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman
in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be
developed, carefully printed, fixed.
Goodbye to Berlin (1939) "Berlin Diary" Autumn 1930
Mr Norris changes trains.
Title of novel (1935)
See also W. H. Auden (1.67) and Christopher Isherwood
10.1 Holbrook Jackson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1948
A mother never realizes that her children are no longer children.
All Manner of Folk (1912) "On a Certain Arrangement" p. 89
Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge.
Anatomy of Bibliomania (1930) vol. 1, p. 150
As soon as an idea is accepted it is time to reject it.
Platitudes in the Making (1911) p. 13
10.2 Joe Jacobs
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1940
We was robbed!
Shouted into the microphone after Jack Sharkey beat Max Schmeling (of whom
Jacobs was manager) in the heavyweight title fight, 21 June 1932, in Peter
Heller In This Corner (1975) p. 44
I should of stood [i.e. have stayed] in bed.
Said after he left his sick-bed in October 1935 to attend the World
Baseball Series in Detroit and he bet on the losers, in John Lardner
Strong Cigars (1951) p. 61
10.3 Mick Jagger and Keith Richard (Keith Richards)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mick Jagger 1943-
Keith Richard 1943-
It's only rock 'n' roll.
Title of song (1974)
Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, oh, boy,
'Cause summer's here and the time is oh, right for fighting in the
street, boy.
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band,
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for street fighting man!
Street Fighting Man (1968 song)
10.4 Henry James
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1843-1916
The ever-importunate murmur, "Dramatize it, dramatize it!"
Altar of the Dead (1909 ed.) preface
The terrible fluidity of self-revelation.
Ambassadors (1909 ed.) preface
Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what
you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had
that, what have you had?
Ambassadors (1903) bk. 5, ch. 11
The deep well of unconscious cerebration.
The American (1909 ed.) preface
The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use;
the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.
Aspern Papers (1909 ed.) preface
Summer afternoon--summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two
most beautiful words in the English language.
In Edith Wharton Backward Glance (1934) ch. 10
He [Henry James] is said to have told his old friend Lady Prothero, when
she saw him after the first stroke, that in the very act of falling (he
was dressing at the time) he heard in the room a voice which was
distinctly, it seemed, not his own saying: "So here it is at last, the
distinguished thing!"
Edith Wharton Backward Glance (1934) ch. 14
To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
Complete Tales (1962) vol. 1 "My Friend Bingham" (1867 short story)
We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt
is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of
art.
Complete Tales (1964) vol. 9 "Middle Years" (1893 short story)
Vereker's secret, my dear man--the general intention of his books: the
string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the
carpet.
Figure in the Carpet (1896) ch. 11
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Hawthorne (1879) ch. 1
Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be
none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was
eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse
than provincial--he was parochial.
Hawthorne (1879) ch. 4
Cats and monkeys--monkeys and cats--all human life is there!
Madonna of the Future (1879) vol. 1, p. 59 ("All human life is there" was
used by Maurice Smelt as an advertising slogan for the News of the World
in the late 1950s)
They have fairly faced the full, the monstrous demonstration that Tennyson
was not Tennysonian.
Middle Years (1917 autobiography) ch. 6
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to
represent life.
Partial Portraits (1888) "Art of Fiction"
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without
incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Partial Portraits (1888) "Art of Fiction"
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense
sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads
suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne
particle in its tissue.
Partial Portraits (1888) "Art of Fiction"
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but
the illustration of character? What is either a picture or a novel that is
not character?
Partial Portraits (1888) "Art of Fiction"
We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donn‚e: our criticism
is applied only to what he makes of it.
Partial Portraits (1888) "Art of Fiction"
I don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.
Portrait of a Lady (1881) vol. 2, ch. 5. Cf. Max Beerbohm 23:14
I didn't, of course, stay her hand--there never is in such cases "time";
and I had once more the full demonstration of the fatal futility of Fact.
Spoils of Poynton (1909 ed.) preface
We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had
stopped.
Turn of the Screw (1898) p. 169
10.5 William James
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1842-1910
Man, biologically considered, and whatever else he may be into the
bargain, is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and,
indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species.
Atlantic Monthly Dec. 1904, p. 845
I now perceive one immense omission in my Psychology,--the deepest
principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it
out altogether from the book, because I had never had it gratified till
now.
Letter to his class at Radcliffe College, 6 Apr. 1896, in Letters (1920)
vol. 2, p. 33
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess
success. That--with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word
success--is our national disease.
Letter to H. G. Wells, 11 Sept. 1906, in Letters (1920) vol. 2, p. 260
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and
disdains--under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the
human core.
McClure's Magazine Feb. 1908, p. 422
So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary
function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the
mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full
inwardness of the situation.
Memories and Studies (1911) "The Moral Equivalent of War" p. 283
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is
habitual but indecision.
Principles of Psychology (1890) vol. 1, ch. 4
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
Principles of Psychology (1890) vol. 2, ch. 22
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference
with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not
assume to interfere by violence with ours.
Talks to Teachers (1899) "What makes a Life Significant?"
If merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely
valid human experience.
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) lecture 1, p. 16
An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a
revelation.
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) lectures 4 and 5, p. 113
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) lectures 14 and 15, p. 355
One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they
have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
Introduction to Christina Stead The Man Who Loved Children (1965) p. xxvi
10.7 Douglas Jay
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-
It was Bert Amey who asked me to send him a brief rhyming North Battersea
slogan [for the 1946 by-election]. I suggested: "Fair Shares for All, is
Labour's Call"; and from this by-election "Fair Shares for All" spread in
a few years round the country.
Change and Fortune (1980) ch. 7
For in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education,
the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people
than the people know themselves.
Socialist Case (1939) ch. 30
10.8 Sir James Jeans
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1877-1946
Taking a very gloomy view of the future of the human race, let us suppose
that it can only expect to survive for two thousand million years longer,
a period about equal to the past age of the earth. Then, regarded as a
being destined to live for three-score years and ten, humanity, although
it has been born in a house seventy years old, is itself only three days
old.
Eos (1928) p. 12
Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain
exceptional properties.
Mysterious Universe (1930) ch. 1
From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the
Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.
Mysterious Universe (1930) ch. 5
10.9 Patrick Jenkin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-
People can clean their teeth in the dark, use the top of the stove instead
of the oven, all sorts of savings, but they must use less electricity.
Radio broadcast, 15 Jan. 1974, in The Times 16 Jan. 1974
10.10 Rt. Revd David Jenkins (Bishop of Durham)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1925-
I wouldn't put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if he wanted to, but
I very much doubt if he would--because it seems to be contrary to the way
in which he deals with persons and brings his wonders out of natural
personal relationships.
In Church Times 4 May 1984
The withdrawal of an imported, elderly American [Ian MacGregor] to leave a
reconciling opportunity for some local product is surely neither
dishonourable nor improper.
In The Times 22 Sept. 1984
10.11 Roy Jenkins (Baron Jenkins of Hillhead)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1920-
The politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an
out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of
Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould.
Can it be broken?
Speech to Parliamentary Press Gallery, 9 June 1980, in The Times 10 June
1980
10.12 Paul Jennings
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-1989
I am prepared to testify on oath that on the portico pillars of one
building there is a bronze office sign which simply says: ACTIVATED
SLUDGE.
Oddly Enough (1950) "Activated Sludge"
Clark-Trimble arranged four hundred pieces of carpet in ascending degrees
of quality, from coarse matting to priceless Chinese silk. Pieces of
toast and marmalade, graded, weighed, and measured, were then dropped on
each piece of carpet, and the marmalade-downwards incidence was
statistically analysed. The toast fell right-side-up every time on the
cheap carpet...and it fell marmalade-downwards every time on the Chinese
silk.
Town and Country Sept. 1949, "Report on Resistentialism"
10.13 Jerome K. Jerome
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1927
It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you
are an exceptionally good liar.
The Idler Feb. 1892, p. 118
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work
to do.
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) "On Being Idle"
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) "On Being in Love"
We drink one another's healths, and spoil our own.
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) "On Eating and Drinking"
The world must be getting old, I think; it dresses so very soberly now.
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) "On Dress and Deportment"
I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a
humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should
probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.
My Life and Times (1926) ch. 6
The passing of the third floor back.
Title of story (1907) and play (1910)
I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend
the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.
They and I (1909) ch. 11
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine
advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering
from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.
Three Men in a Boat (1889) ch. 1
But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his
mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.
Three Men in a Boat (1889) ch. 3
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love
to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
Three Men in a Boat (1889) ch. 15
10.14 William Jerome
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1932
Any old place I can hang my hat is home sweet home to me.
Title of song (1901; music by Jean Schwartz)
You needn't try to reason,
Your excuse is out of season,
Just kiss yourself goodbye.
Just Kiss Yourself Goodbye (1902 song; music by Jean Schwartz)
10.15 C. E. M. Joad
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1953
It all depends what you mean by...
Frequent opening to replies on the BBC radio series "The Brains Trust"
(originally "Any Questions"), 1941-8
My life is spent in a perpetual alternation between two rhythms, the
rhythm of attracting people for fear I may be lonely, and the rhythm of
trying to get rid of them because I know that I am bored.
In Observer 12 Dec. 1948, p. 2
10.16 Pope John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1963
If civil authorities legislate for or allow anything that is contrary to
that order and therefore contrary to the will of God, neither the laws
made or the authorizations granted can be binding on the consciences of
the citizens, since God has more right to be obeyed than man.
Pacem in Terris (1963) p. 142
The social progress, order, security and peace of each country are
necessarily connected with the social progress, order, security and peace
of all other countries.
Pacem in Terris (1963) p. 150
John XXIII said that during the first months of his pontificate he often
woke during the night, thinking himself still a cardinal and worried over
a difficult decision to be made, and he would say to himself: "I'll talk
it over with the Pope!" Then he would remember where he was. "But I'm the
Pope!" he said to himself. After which he would conclude: "Well I'll talk
it over with Our Lord!"
Henri Fesquet Wit and Wisdom of Good Pope John (1964) p. 59
Anybody can be pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.
Henri Fesquet Wit and Wisdom of Good Pope John (1964) p. 112
10.17 Lyndon Baines Johnson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1973
I don't want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy's
window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in
my pocket.
In David Halberstam Best and Brightest (1972) ch. 20
It's probably better to have him [J. Edgar Hoover] inside the tent pissing
out, than outside pissing in.
In David Halberstam Best and Brightest (1972) ch. 20
Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
In Richard Reeves A Ford, not a Lincoln (1975) ch. 2
For the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty.
Speech to Congress, 16 Mar. 1964, in New York Times 17 Mar. 1964, p. 22
All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.
Speech to Congress, 27 Nov. 1963, in Public Papers of the Presidents of
the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 1, p. 8 (after the
previous president, J. F. Kennedy, was assassinated)
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have
talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next
chapter, and to write it in the books of law.
Speech to Congress, 27 Nov. 1963, in Public Papers of the Presidents of
the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 1, p. 9
We hope that the world will not narrow into a neighbourhood before it has
broadened into a brotherhood.
Speech at lighting of the Nation's Christmas Tree, 22 Dec. 1963, in
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson
1963-64, vol. 1, item 65
This administration today, here and now declares unconditional war on
poverty in America.
State of the Union address to Congress, 8 Jan. 1964, in Public Papers of
the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 1, p.
114
In your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich
society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.
Speech at University of Michigan, 22 May 1964, in Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 1, p. 704
We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risks of
spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war.
Speech on radio and television, 4 Aug. 1964, in Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 2, p. 927
We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to
do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
Speech at Akron University, 21 Oct. 1964, in Public Papers of the
Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 2, p.
1391
Extremism in the pursuit of the Presidency is an unpardonable vice.
Moderation in the affairs of the nation is the highest virtue.
Speech in New York, 31 Oct. 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents of
the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-64 vol. 2, p. 1559
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is
right.
State of the Union address to Congress, 4 Jan. 1965, in Public Papers of
the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1965 vol. 1, p. 9
I am a free man, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in
that order.
Texas Quarterly Winter 1958
10.18 Philander Chase Johnson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1939
Cheer up! the worst is yet to come!
Everybody's Magazine May 1920
10.19 Philip Johnson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-
Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
New York Times 27 Dec. 1964, p. 9E
Wenn ich Kultur h”re...entsichere ich meinen Browning!
Whenever I hear the word culture...I release the safety-catch of my
Browning [pistol]!
Schlageter (1933) act 1, sc. 1. Often attributed to Hermann Goering
10.21 Al Jolson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1886-1950
It can be revealed for the first time that it was in San Francisco [in
1906] that Al Jolson first uttered his immortal slogan, "You ain't heard
nuttin' yet!" One night at the cafe he had just finished a song when a
deafening burst of noise from a building project across the street drowned
out the applause. At the top of his lungs, Jolson screamed, "You think
that's noise--you ain't heard nuttin' yet!" And he proceeded to deliver an
encore which for sheer blasting power put to everlasting shame all the
decibels of noise the carpenters, the brick-layers and the drillers could
scare up between them.
Martin Abramson Real Story of Al Jolson (1950) p. 12
10.22 James Jones
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1921-
From here to eternity.
Title of novel (1951). Cf. Rudyard Kipling 123:16
10.23 LeRoi Jones
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
See Imamu Amiri Baraka (2.13)
10.24 Erica Jong
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1942-
The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the
unicorn. And I have never had one.
Fear of Flying (1973) ch. 1
Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz
My friends all drive Porsches,
I must make amends.
Mercedes Benz (1970 song)
Fourteen heart attacks and he had to die in my week. In MY week.
Said when Eisenhower's death prevented her photograph from being on the
front cover of Newsweek, in New Musical Express 12 Apr. 1969
10.26 Sir Keith Joseph
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-
Perhaps there is at work here a process, apparent in many situations but
imperfectly understood, by which problems reproduce themselves from
generation to generation. If I refer to this as a "cycle of deprivation" I
do not want to be misunderstood.
Speech in London to Pre-School Playgroups Association, 29 June 1972
10.27 James Joyce
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1941
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was
falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills,
falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling
into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part
of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It
lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears
of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he
heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling,
like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Dubliners (1914) "The Dead"
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings
us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and
Environs.
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 1, p. 3
That ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia.
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 1, p. 120
The flushpots of Euston and the hanging garments of Marylebone.
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 1, p. 192
O
tell me all about
Anna Livia! I want to hear all
about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia?
Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now.
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 1, p. 196
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone.
Beside the rivering waters of hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 1, p. 216
All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the
fear of the Law.
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 2, p. 301
Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 2, p. 383
The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity.
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 3, p. 414
If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd
come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly,
only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass
behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End
here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till
thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a
long the
Finnegans Wake (1939) pt. 4, p. 627
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming
down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a
nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ch. 1
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or
beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence,
indifferent, paring his fingernails.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ch. 5
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ch. 5
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever
is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human
sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of
whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with
the secret cause.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ch. 5
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of
experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience
of my race....Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good
stead.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ch. 5
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself
my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in
some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using
for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and
cunning.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) ch. 5
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of
lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown,
ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He
held the bowl aloft and intoned:
--Introibo ad altare Dei.
Ulysses (1922) p. 1
The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.
Ulysses (1922) p. 5
It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.
Ulysses (1922) p. 7
When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes
water I makes water.... Begob, ma'am, says Mrs. Cahill, God send you don't
make them in the one pot.
Ulysses (1922) p. 12
I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Ulysses (1922) p. 31
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Ulysses (1922) p. 34
Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet.
Ulysses (1922) p. 50
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He
liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver
slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked
grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly
scented urine.
Ulysses (1922) p. 53
Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job.
Ulysses (1922) p. 102
She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone voice.
Ulysses (1922) p. 147
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the
portals of discovery.
Ulysses (1922) p. 182
Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife
for his friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect,
saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the
university of Oxtail.
Ulysses (1922) p. 375
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
Ulysses (1922) p. 651
He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as
another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he
asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms
around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all
perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will
Yes.
Ulysses (1922) p. 732
When a young man came up to him in Zurich and said, "May I kiss the hand
that wrote Ulysses?" Joyce replied, somewhat like King Lear, "No, it did
lots of other things too."
Richard Ellmann James Joyce (1959) p. 114
10.28 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw)
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1906-1946
Germany calling! Germany calling!
Habitual introduction to propaganda broadcasts to Britain during the
Second World War
10.29 Jack Judge and Harry Williams
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jack Judge 1878-1938
Harry Williams 1874-1924
It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go;
It's a long way to Tipperary,
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye, Piccadilly,
Farewell, Leicester Square,
It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there!
It's a Long Way to Tipperary (1912 song)
10.30 Carl Gustav Jung
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1875-1961
Ein Mensch, der nicht durch die H”lle seiner Leidenschaften gegangen ist,
hat sie auch nie Ѓberwunden.
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never
overcome them.
Errinerungen, Tr„ume, Gedanken (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962)
ch. 9
Soweit wir zu erkennen verm”gen, ist es die einzige Sinn der menschlichen
Existenz, ein Licht anzЃnden in der Finsternis des blossen Seins.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle
a light in the darkness of mere being.
Errinerungen, Tr„ume, Gedanken (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962)
ch. 11
Jede Form von SЃchtigkeit ist von Ѓbel, gleichgЃltig, ob es sich um
Alkohol oder Morphium oder Idealismus handelt.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol
or morphine or idealism.
Erinnerungen, Tr„ume, Gedanken (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962)
ch. 12
I do not believe....I know.
In L. van der Post Jung and the Story of our Time (1976) p. 215
Wo die Liebe herrscht, da gibt es keinen Machtwillen, und wo die Macht den
Vorrang hat, da fehlt die Liebe. Das eine ist der Schatten des andern.
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates,
love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
љber die Psychologie des Unbewussten (On the Psychology of the
Unconscious, 1917) in Gesammelte Werke (1964) vol. 7, p. 58
Alles, was wir an den Kindern „ndern wollen, sollten wir zun„chst wohl
aufmerksam prЃfen, ob es nicht etwas sei, was besser an uns zu „ndern
w„re.
If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first
examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be
changed in ourselves.
Vom Werden der Pers”nlichkeit (On the Development of Personality, 1932)
in Gesammelte Werke (1972) vol. 17, p. 194
Pers”nlichkeit ist h”chste Verwirklichung der eingeborenen Eigenart des
besonderen lebenden Wesens. Pers”nlichkeit ist der Tat des h”chsten
Lebensmutes, der absoluten Bejahung des individuell Seienden und der
erfolgreichsten Anpassung an das universal Gegetene bei gr”sstm”glicher
Freiheit der eigenen Entscheidung.
Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a
particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in
the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the
individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions
of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal
decision.
Vom Werden der Pers”nlichkeit (On the Development of Personality, 1932)
in Gesammelte Werke (1972) vol. 17, p. 195
Eine gewissermassen oberfl„chliche Schicht des Unbewussten ist zweifellos
pers”nlich. Wir nennen sie das pers”nliche Unbewusste . Dieses ruht aber
auf einer tieferen Schicht, welche nicht mehr pers”nlicher Erfahrung und
Erwerbung entstammt, sondern angeboren ist. Diese tiefere Schicht ist das
sogenannte kollektive Unbewusste ....Die Inhalte des pers”nlichen
Unbewussten sind in der Hauptsache die sogenannten gefЃhlsbetonten
Komplexe ....Die Inhalte des kollektiven Unbewussten dagegen sind die
sogenannten Archetypen .
A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly
personal. I call it the personal unconscious. But this personal
unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal
experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper
layer I call the collective unconscious....The contents of the personal
unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned complexes....The contents of the
collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes.
Eranos Jahrbuch (Eranos Yearbook, 1934) p. 180
11.0 K
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" which I saw on an Italian movie poster,
are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of
movies.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968) "Note on the Title"
She [Barbra Streisand in What's Up, Doc?] does her own shtick--the rapid,
tricky New Yorkese line readings...but she doesn't do anything she hasn't
already done. She's playing herself--and it's awfully soon for that.
New Yorker 25 Mar. 1972, p. 122
11.2 Franz Kafka
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1883-1924
Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas B”ses
getan h„tte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.
Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything
wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
Der Prozess (The Trial, 1925) opening sentence
Sie k”nnen einwenden, dass es ja Ѓberhaupt kein Verfahren ist, Sie haben
sehr recht, denn es ist ja nur ein Verfahren, wenn ich es als solches
anerkenne.
You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it
is only a trial if I recognize it as such.
Der Prozess (The Trial, 1925) ch. 2
Es ist oft besser, in Ketten, als frei zu sein.
It's often better to be in chains than to be free.
Der Prozess (The Trial, 1925) ch. 8
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Tr„ume erwachte, fand er sich
in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915) opening sentence
11.3 Gus Kahn and Raymond B. Egan
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Gus Kahn 1886-1941
Raymond B. Egan 1890-1952
There's nothing surer,
The rich get rich and the poor get children.
In the meantime, in between time,
Ain't we got fun.
Ain't We Got Fun (1921 song; music by Richard A. Whiting)
11.4 Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, and Nat Perrin
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Bert Kalmar 1884-1947
Harry Ruby 1895-1974
Arthur Sheekman 1891-1978
Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honour...which is probably more
than she ever did.
Duck Soup (1933 film; said by Groucho Marx)
If you can't leave in a taxi you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon,
you can leave in a minute and a huff.
Duck Soup (1933 film; said by Groucho Marx)
11.5 George S. Kaufman
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1889-1961
Satire is what closes Saturday night.
In Scott Meredith George S. Kaufman and his Friends (1974) ch. 6
11.6 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
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George S. Kaufman 1889-1961
Moss Hart 1904-1961
The man who came to dinner.
Title of play (1939)
11.7 George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind
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George S. Kaufman 1889-1961
Morrie Ryskind 1895-1985
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas
I'll never know.
Animal Crackers (1930 film; said by Groucho Marx) in Richard J. Anobile
Hooray for Captain Spaulding (1974) p. 168
Driftwood (Groucho Marx): It's all right. That's--that's in every
contract. That's--that's what they call a sanity clause.
Fiorello (Chico Marx): You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Claus.
Night at the Opera (1935 film), in Richard J. Anobile Why a Duck? (1971)
p. 206
Our second handicap was an election manifesto which Gerald Kaufman rightly
described as "the longest suicide note in history."
Denis Healey Time of My Life (1989) ch. 23 (describing the Labour Party's
New Hope for Britain, published in 1983)
11.9 Paul Kaufman and Mike Anthony
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Poetry in motion.
Title of song (1960)
11.10 Patrick Kavanagh
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1905-1967
I hate what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.
Ploughman and Other Poems (1936), "Inniskeen Road: July Evening"
Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy's hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon--the Three Wise Kings.
Soul for Sale (1947) "Christmas Childhood"
Clay is the word and clay is the flesh
Where the potato-gatherers like mechanized scarecrows move
Along the side-fall of the hill--Maguire and his men.
Soul for Sale (1947) "The Great Hunger"
That was how his life happened.
No mad hooves galloping in the sky,
But the weak, washy way of true tragedy--
A sick horse nosing around the meadow for a clean place to die.
Soul for Sale (1947) "The Great Hunger"
Cecil: After you, Claude.
Claude: No, after you, Cecil.
Catch-phrase in ITMA (BBC radio programme, 1939-49)
Can I do you now, sir?
Catch-phrase spoken by "Mrs Mopp" in ITMA (BBC radio programme, 1939-49)
Don't forget the diver.
Catch-phrase spoken by "The Diver" in ITMA (BBC radio programme, 1939-49);
in ITMA 1939-1948 (1948) p. 19, Francis Worsley says: This character was a
memory of the pier at New Brighton where Tommy [Handley] used to go as a
child....A man in a bathing suit...whined "Don't forget the diver, sir."
I don't mind if I do.
Catch-phrase spoken by "Colonel Chinstrap" in ITMA (BBC radio programme,
1939-49)
I go--I come back.
Catch-phrase spoken by "Ali Oop" in ITMA (BBC radio programme, 1939-49)
It's being so cheerful as keeps me going.
Catch-phrase spoken by "Mona Lott" in ITMA (BBC radio programme, 1939-49)
11.12 Helen Keller
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1880-1968
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy
for the worst of them all--the apathy of human beings.
My Religion (1927) ch. 6
11.13 Jaan Kenbrovin and John William Kellette
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
In Ms. Mar. 1973, p. 89
11.15 Jimmy Kennedy
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1902-1984
If you go down in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down in the woods today
You'd better go in disguise
For every Bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because,
Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their Picnic.
Teddy Bear's Picnic (1932 song; music by John W. Bratton)
11.16 Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr
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Jimmy Kennedy 1902-1984
Michael Carr 1904-1968
South of the Border--down Mexico way.
South of the Border (1939 song)
We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line.
Title of song (1939)
11.17 Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams (Will Grosz)
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Jimmy Kennedy 1902-1984
Red sails in the sunset.
Title of song (1935)
11.18 John F. Kennedy
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1917-1963
I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy [Joseph P.
Kennedy]--"Dear Jack. Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be
damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide."
Speech in Washington, 1958, in J. F. Cutler Honey Fitz (1962) p. 306
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that
things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.
Speech at White House, 27 May 1961, in New York Times 28 May 1961, p. 39
Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
Speech to United Nations General Assembly, 25 Sept. 1961, in New York
Times 26 Sept. 1961, p. 14
The President described the dinner [for Nobel Prizewinners] as "probably
the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for
perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone."
New York Times 30 Apr. 1962, p. 1
Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum". Today,
in the world of freedom the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein
Berliner"....All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.
And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, "Ich bin ein
Berliner".
Speech in West Berlin, 26 June 1963, in New York Times 27 June 1963, p. 12
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his
limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds
him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts,
poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must
serve as the touchstone of our judgement.
Speech at Amherst College, Mass., 26 Oct. 1963, in New York Times 27 Oct.
1963, p. 87
In free society art is not a weapon....Artists are not engineers of the
soul.
Speech at Amherst College, Mass., 26 Oct. 1963, in New York Times 27 Oct.
1963, p. 87
It was involuntary. They sank my boat.
Reply when asked how he became a war hero, in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. A
Thousand Days (1965) ch. 4
We stand today on the edge of a new frontier--the frontier of the 1960s--a
frontier of unknown opportunities and perils--a frontier of unfulfilled
hopes and threats. Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom promised our nation a new
political and economic framework. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal promised
security and succor to those in need. But the New Frontier of which I
speak is not a set of promises--it is a set of challenges. It sums up not
what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of
them.
Speech accepting Democratic nomination in Los Angeles, 15 July 1960, in
Vital Speeches 1 Aug. 1960, p. 611
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in
this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,
proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow
undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been
committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the
world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay
any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose
any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 Feb. 1961, p. 226
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the
few who are rich.
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 Feb. 1961, p. 226
Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 Feb. 1961, p. 227
All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be
finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration,
nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 Feb. 1961, p. 227
Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms
we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are--but a call to
bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out,
"rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common
enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 Feb. 1961, p. 227
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask
what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not
what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom
of man.
Inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1961, in Vital Speeches 1 Feb. 1961, p. 227.
Cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., speech at Keene, New Hampshire, 30 May
1884: "We pause to...recall what our country has done for each of us and
to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."
I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him
safely to earth.
Supplementary State of the Union message to Congress, 25 May 1961, in
Vital Speeches 15 June 1961, p. 518
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable.
Speech at White House, 13 Mar. 1962, in Vital Speeches 1 Apr. 1962, p. 356
11.19 Joseph P. Kennedy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1969
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
In J. H. Cutler Honey Fitz (1962) p. 291 (also attributed to Knute Rockne)
See also John F. Kennedy (11.18 )
11.20 Robert F. Kennedy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1925-1968
About one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
Speech at University of Pennsylvania, 6 May 1964, in Philadelphia Inquirer
7 May 1964
11.21 Jack Kerouac
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1922-1969
John Clellon Holmes...and I were sitting around trying to think up the
meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent Existentialism and I
said, "You know, this is really a beat generation" and he leapt up and
said "That's it, that's right!"
Playboy June 1959, p. 32
11.22 Jean Kerr
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1923-
As someone pointed out recently, if you can keep your head when all about
you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the
situation.
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957) introduction. Cf. Rudyard Kipling
126:13
I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's
deep enough. What do you want--an adorable pancreas?
The Snake has all the Lines (1958) p. 142
11.23 Joseph Kesselring
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1902-1967
Arsenic and old lace.
Title of play (1941)
11.24 John Maynard Keynes (Baron Keynes)
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1883-1946
I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
Letter to Duncan Grant, 15 Dec. 1917, in British Library Add. MSS 57931
fo. 119
He [Clemenceau] felt about France what Pericles felt of Athens--unique
value in her, nothing else mattering; but his theory of politics was
Bismarck's. He had one illusion--France; and one disillusion--mankind,
including Frenchmen, and his colleagues not least.
Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) ch. 3
Like Odysseus, the President [Woodrow Wilson] looked wiser when he was
seated.
Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) ch. 3
Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the
existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process
engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction,
and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to
diagnose.
Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) ch. 6
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the
emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes a man more
conservative--to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
End of Laissez-Faire (1926) pt. 1
Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of
Opinion--how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so
powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through
them, the events of history.
End of Laissez-Faire (1926) pt. 3
The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals
are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but
to do those things which at present are not done at all.
End of Laissez-Faire (1926) pt. 4
I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more
efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in
sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable.
End of Laissez-Faire (1926) pt. 5
How can I convey to the reader, who does not know him, any just impression
of this extraordinary figure of our time, this syren, this goat-footed
bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and
enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity? One catches in his company that
flavour of final purposelessness, inner irresponsibility, existence
outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning,
remorselessness, love of power, that lend fascination, enthralment, and
terror to the fair-seeming magicians of North European folklore.
Essays in Biography (1933) "Mr Lloyd George"
It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over
his fellow-citizens.
General Theory of Employment (1936) ch. 24
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly
understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who
believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences,
are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority,
who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic
scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested
interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of
ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the
field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are
influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of
age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even
agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But
soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for
good or evil.
General Theory of Employment (1936; 1947 ed.) ch. 24
I remember in my youth asking Maynard Keynes, "What do you think happens
to Mr Lloyd George when he is alone in the room?" And Keynes replied,
"When he is alone in the room there is nobody there."
Lady Violet Bonham-Carter Impact of Personality in Politics (Romanes
Lecture, 1963) p. 6
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long
run we are all dead.
Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) ch. 3
Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and
for all.
Speech to secret session of 20th Congress of the Communist Party, 25 Feb.
1956, in Dethronement of Stalin (Manchester Guardian) 11 June 1956, p. 27
If anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of
Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself. Those who wait for that must
wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.
Speech in Moscow, 17 Sept. 1955, in New York Times 18 Sept. 1955, p. 19
If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of
porcupines under you.
In New York Times 7 Nov. 1963
Anyone who believes that the worker can be lulled by fine revolutionary
phrases is mistaken....If no concern is shown for the growth of material
and spiritual riches, the people will listen today, they will listen
tomorrow, and then they may say: "Why do you promise us everything for the
future? You are talking, so to speak, about life beyond the grave. The
priest has already told us about this."
Speech at World Youth Forum, 19 Sept. 1964, in Pravda 22 Sept. 1964
If one cannot catch the bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.
In Time 6 Jan. 1958
We say this not only for the socialist states, who are more akin to us. We
base ourselves on the idea that we must peacefully co-exist. About the
capitalist States, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If
you don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite us to
come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We
will bury you.
Speech to Western diplomats at reception in Moscow for Polish leader Mr
Gomulka, 18 Nov. 1956, in The Times 19 Nov. 1956
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Trees and Other Poems (1914) "Trees"
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Trees and Other Poems (1914) "Trees"
11.27 Lord Kilmuir (Sir David Maxwell Fyfe)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1967
Loyalty is the Tory's secret weapon.
In Anthony Sampson Anatomy of Britain (1962) ch. 6
11.28 Martin Luther King
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-1968
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, Alabama, 16 Apr. 1963, in Atlantic Monthly
Aug. 1963, p. 78
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great
stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens
Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more
devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is
the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of
justice.
Letter from Birmingham Jail, Alabama, 16 Apr. 1963, in Atlantic Monthly
Aug. 1963, p. 81
I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
Speech in Detroit, 23 June 1963, in J. Bishop Days of M. L. King Jr.
(1971) ch. 4
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
In New York Journal-American 10 Sept. 1962, p. 1
Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties
of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise
up and live out the true meaning of its creed:--"We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down
together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state
sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character.
Speech at Civil Rights March in Washington, 28 Aug. 1963, in New York
Times 29 Aug. 1963, p. 21
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've been to the mountain top. I
won't mind. Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has
its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's
will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over,
and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want
you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So
I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any
man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Speech in Memphis, 3 Apr. 1968 (the day before King was assassinated), in
New York Times 4 Apr. 1968, p. 24
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy.
Strength to Love (1963) ch. 3
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity.
Strength to Love (1963) ch. 4
Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law. He knew that the
old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek
to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good.
Strength to Love (1963) ch. 4
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men.
Strength to Love (1963) ch. 7
If we assume that mankind has a right to survive, then we must find an
alternative to war and destruction. In our day of space vehicles and
guided ballistic missiles, the choice is either nonviolence or
nonexistence.
Strength to Love (1963) ch. 17
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Speech at St. Louis, 22 Mar. 1964, in St Louis Post-Dispatch 23 Mar. 1964
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
Where Do We Go From Here? (1967) ch. 4
11.29 Stoddard King
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1889-1933
There's a long, long trail awinding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams;
There's a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I'll be going down
That long, long trail with you.
There's a Long, Long Trail (1913 song; music by Zo (Alonso) Elliott)
11.30 David Kingsley, Dennis Lyons, and Peter Lovell-Davis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Yesterday's men (they failed before!).
Advertising slogan for the Labour Party (referring to the Conservatives),
1970, in David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky British General
Election of 1970 (1971) ch. 6
Friends...are God's apology for relations.
In Michael Holroyd Best of Hugh Kingsmill (1970) p. 12
What still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl's, and swing for it.
Like enough, you won't be glad,
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon's not the only thing
That's cured by hanging from a string.
Table of Truth (1933) "Two Poems, after A. E. Housman," no. 1
'Tis Summer Time on Bredon,
And now the farmers swear:
The cattle rise and listen
In valleys far and near,
And blush at what they hear.
But when the mists in autumn
On Bredon top are thick,
And happy hymns of farmers
Go up from fold and rick,
The cattle then are sick.
Table of Truth (1933) "Two Poems, after A. E. Housman," no. 2
11.32 Neil Kinnock
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1942-
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary, I
warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not
to grow old.
Speech at Bridgend, 7 June 1983, in Guardian 8 June 1983
Mr Shultz went off his pram.
Comment after a meeting with the US Secretary of State, in Guardian 15
Feb. 1984
I would die for my country but I could never let my country die for me.
Speech at Labour Party Conference, 30 Sept. 1986, in Guardian 1 Oct. 1986
Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to
a university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand
generations to be able to get to a university? Was it because all our
predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing
and play and write poetry? Those people who could make wonderful beautiful
things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions?
Was it because they were weak, those people who could work eight hours
underground and then come up and play football, weak? Does anybody really
think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent
or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It's
because they didn't have a platform on which they could stand.
Speech in party political broadcast, 21 May 1987, in New York Times 12
Sept. 1987, p. 1 (this speech was later plagiarized by the American
politician Joe Biden)
But I consort with long-haired things
In velvet collar-rolls,
Who talk about the Aims of Art,
And "theories" and "goals,"
And moo and coo with women-folk
About their blessed souls.
Abaft the Funnel (1909) "In Partibus"
When you've shouted "Rule Britannia," when you've sung "God save the
Queen"--
When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth--
Will you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine
For a gentleman in Kharki ordered South?
He's an absent-minded beggar and his weaknesses are great--
But we and Paul must take him as we find him--
He is out on active service, wiping something off a slate--
And he's left a lot o' little things behind him!
Absent-Minded Beggar (1899) p. 1
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Actions and Reactions (1909) "The Power of the Dog"
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right!
Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads (1893) "In the Neolithic Age"
"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out," the Colour-Sergeant said.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Danny Deever"
For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow square--they're hangin' him to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Danny Deever"
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Tommy"
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an "Tommy 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Tommy"
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Tommy"
So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan;
You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man;
An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air--
You big black boundin' beggar--for you broke a British square!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Fuzzy-Wuzzy"
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Gunga Din"
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Gunga Din"
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam--she 'as millions at 'ome,
An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The Widow at Windsor"
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The Young British Soldier"
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, an' the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Mandalay"
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Mandalay"
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Mandalay"
We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We're little black sheep who've gone astray,
Baa-aa-aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Gentlemen-Rankers"
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgement Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of
earth!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The Ballad of East and West"
And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south,
With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth.
Four things greater than all things are,--
Women and Horses and Power and War.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The Ballad of the King's Jest"
When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the
mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty
heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it
Art?"
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The Conundrum of the Workshops"
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the
cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, but is it
Art?"
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The Conundrum of the Workshops"
Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro--
And what should they know of England who only England know?--
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "The English Flag"
For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "Tomlinson"
There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;
But the sweetest way to me is a ship's upon the sea
In the heel of the North -East Trade.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) "L'Envoi"
What the horses o' Kansas think to-day, the horses of America will think
tomorrow; an' I tell you that when the horses of America rise in their
might, the day o' the Oppressor is ended.
The Day's Work (1898) "A Walking Delegate"
The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.
Departmental Ditties (1886) "Pagett, MP"
A Nation spoke to a Nation,
A Throne sent word to a Throne:
"Daughter am I in my mother's house,
But mistress in my own.
The gates are mine to open,
As the gates are mine to close,
And I abide by my Mother's House."
Said our Lady of the Snows.
Departmental Ditties (1898 US ed.) "Our Lady of the Snows"
Who hath desired the Sea?--the sight of salt water unbounded--
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber
wind-hounded?
The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and
growing--
Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed hurricane blowing.
The Five Nations (1903) "The Sea and the Hills"
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.
The Five Nations (1903) "Sussex"
God gives all men all earth to love,
But since man's heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
BelovЉd over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground--in a fair ground--
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
The Five Nations (1903) "Sussex"
Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls
With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the
goals.
The Five Nations (1903) "The Islanders"
We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa!--
Foot--foot--foot--foot--sloggin' over Africa--
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up and down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!
The Five Nations (1903) "Boots" (for the last line, cf. Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 55:25)
An' it all goes into the laundry,
But it never comes out in the wash,
'Ow we're sugared about by the old men
('Eavy-sterned amateur old men!)
That 'amper an' 'inder an' scold men
For fear o' Stellenbosh!
The Five Nations (1903) "Stellenbosh"
For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
For All We Have and Are (1914) p. 1
There is but one task for all--
For each one life to give.
What stands if freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
For All We Have and Are (1914) p. 2
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you,
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
History of England (1911) "Dane-Geld"
"Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers,
With England's own coal, up and down the salt seas?"
"We are going to fetch you your bread and your butter,
Your beef, pork, and mutton, eggs, apples, and cheese."
History of England (1911) "Big Steamers"
Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
History of England (1911) "The Glory of the Garden"
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel paths with broken dinner-knives.
History of England (1911) "The Glory of the Garden"
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
History of England (1911) "The Glory of the Garden"
Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world.
In Black and White (1888) "On the City Wall"
"We be one blood, thou and I," Mowgli answered. "I take my life from thee
to-night. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa."
Jungle Book (1894) "Kaa's Hunting"
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
The Jungle Book (1894) "Road Song of the Bandar-Log"
You must not forget the suspenders, Best Beloved.
Just So Stories (1902) "How the Whale got his Throat"
Then the Whale stood up on his Tail and said, "I'm hungry." And the small
'Stute Fish said in a small 'stute voice, "Noble and generous Cetacean,
have you ever tasted Man?" "No," said the Whale. "What is it like?"
"Nice," said the small 'Stute Fish. "Nice but nubbly."
Just So Stories (1902) "How the Whale got his Throat"
He had his Mummy's leave to paddle, or else he would never have done it,
because he was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.
Just So Stories (1902) "How the Whale got his Throat"
The Camel's hump is an ugly lump
Which well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the hump we get
From having too little to do.
Just So Stories (1902) "How the Camel got his Hump"
We get the hump--
Cameelious hump--
The hump that is black and blue!
Just So Stories (1902) "How the Camel got his Hump"
The cure for this ill is not to sit still,
Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also,
And dig till you gently perspire.
Just So Stories (1902) "How the Camel got his Hump"
But there was one Elephant--a new Elephant--an Elephant's Child--who was
full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many
questions.
Just So Stories (1902) "The Elephant's Child"
Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, "Go to the banks of the
great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees,
and find out."
Just So Stories (1902) "The Elephant's Child"
Then the Elephant's Child put his head down close to the Crocodile's
musky, tusky mouth, and the Crocodile caught him by his little nose. At
this, O Best Beloved, the Elephant's Child was much annoyed, and he said,
speaking through his nose, like this, "Led go! You are hurtig be!"
Just So Stories (1902) "The Elephant's Child"
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Just So Stories (1902) "The Elephant's Child"
Yes, weekly from Southampton,
Great steamers, white and gold,
Go rolling down to Rio
(Roll down--roll down to Rio!).
And I'd like to roll to Rio
Some day before I'm old!
Just So Stories (1902) "Beginning of the Armadilloes"
But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself,
and all places were alike to him.
Just So Stories (1902) "The Cat that Walked by Himself"
And he went back through the Wet Wild Woods, waving his wild tail and
walking by his wild lone. But he never told anybody.
Just So Stories (1902) "The Cat that Walked by Himself"
When [Max] Aitken acquired the Daily Express his political views seemed to
Kipling to become more and more inconsistent, and one day Kipling asked
him what he was really up to. Aitken is supposed to have replied: "What I
want is power. Kiss 'em one day and kick 'em the next"; and so on. "I
see," said Kipling. "Power without responsibility: the prerogative of the
harlot throughout the ages." So, many years later, when [Stanley] Baldwin
deemed it necessary to deal sharply with such lords of the press, he
obtained leave of his cousin [Kipling] to borrow that telling phrase,
which he used to some effect on the 18th March, 1931, at...the old Queen's
Hall in Langham Place.
Speech by Earl Baldwin to the Kipling Society, 5 Oct. 1971, in Kipling
Journal Dec. 1971
If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine.
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine.
The Light That Failed (1891) dedication
The man who would be king.
Title of story (1888)
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late
deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."
The Naulahka (1892) ch. 5
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it
takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) "Three and--an Extra"
Every one is more or less mad on one point.
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) "On the Strength of a Likeness"
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) "Tree Song"
England shall bide till Judgement Tide
By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) "Tree Song"
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) "Harp Song of the Dane Women"
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark--
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) "Smuggler's Song"
Land of our birth, we pledge to thee
Our love and toil in the years to be;
When we are grown and take our place,
As men and women with our race.
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) "Children's Song"
Teach us Delight in simple things,
And Mirth that has no bitter springs;
Forgiveness free of evil done,
And Love to all men 'neath the sun!
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) "Children's Song"
The tumult and the shouting dies--
The captains and the kings depart--
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
Recessional, in The Times 17 July 1897
Far-called our navies melt away--
On dune and headland sinks the fire--
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh, and Tyre!
Recessional, in The Times 17 July 1897
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law.
Recessional, in Times 17 July 1897
They shut the road through the woods.
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods.
Rewards and Fairies (1910) "Way through the Woods"
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same...
Rewards and Fairies (1910) "If--"
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss...
Rewards and Fairies (1910) "If--"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
Rewards and Fairies (1910) "If--"
One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
Rewards and Fairies (1910) "The Thousandth Man"
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Rudyard Kipling's Verse (1919) "The Female of the Species"
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man--
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:--
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.
Rudyard Kipling's Verse (1927) "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"
England's on the anvil--hear the hammers ring--
Clanging from the Severn to the Tyne!
Never was a blacksmith like our Norman King--
England's being hammered, hammered, hammered into line!
Rudyard Kipling's Verse (1927) "The Anvil"
Now this is the Law of the Jungle--as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall
break it must die.
Second Jungle Book (1895) "The Law of the Jungle"
Keep ye the law--be swift in all obedience--
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap where he hath sown;
By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the Lord!
The Seven Seas (1896) "A Song of the English"
We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest
To the shark and sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
The Seven Seas (1896) "The Song of the Dead"
And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!
The Seven Seas (1896) "Last Chantey"
The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds--
The Man-o'-War 's 'er 'usband, 'an 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo boats that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you 'an me a-plyin' up and down!
The Seven Seas (1896) "The Liner She's a Lady"
When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took--the same as me!
The Seven Seas (1896) p. 162
I've taken my fun where I've found it,
An' now I must pay for my fun,
For the more you 'ave known o' the others
The less will you settle to one;
An' the end of it's sittin' and thinkin',
An' dreamin' Hell-fires to see;
So be warned by my lot (which I know you will not),
An' learn about women from me!
The Seven Seas (1896) "The Ladies"
An' I learned about women from 'er!
The Seven Seas (1896) "The Ladies"
When you get to a man in the case,
They're like as a row of pins--
For the Colonel 's Lady an' Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins!
The Seven Seas (1896) "The Ladies"
The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone;
'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own;
'E keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about,
An' then comes up the Regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out.
The Seven Seas (1896) "The 'Eathen"
The 'eathen in 'is blindness must end where 'e began.
But the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man!
The Seven Seas (1896) "The 'Eathen"
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!
The Seven Seas (1896) "When Earth's Last Picture is Painted"
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Speech, 14 Feb. 1923, in The Times 15 Feb. 1923
Mr Raymond Martin, beyond question, was born in a gutter, and bred in a
Board-School, where they played marbles. He was further (I give the barest
handful from great store) a Flopshus Cad, an Outrageous Stinker, a
Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper (this was Stalky's contribution), and several
other things which it is not seemly to put down.
Stalky & Co. (1899) p. 214
Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was--like eating an egg
without salt.
The Story of the Gadsbys (1889) "Poor Dear Mamma"
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.
The Story of the Gadsbys (1890) "L'Envoi"
'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some
women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street.
Traffics and Discoveries (1904) "Mrs Bathurst"
It's north you may run to the rime-ringed sun,
Or south to the blind Horn's hate;
Or east all the way into Mississippi Bay,
Or west to the Golden Gate.
Twenty Poems (1918) "The Long Trail"
A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care)
But the fool he called her his lady fair--
(Even as you and I!)
The Vampire (1897) p. 1
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
The White Man's Burden (1899)
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
The White Man's Burden (1899)
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
The Years Between (1919) "Common Form"
11.34 Henry Kissinger
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1923-
"We are the President's men," he [Kissinger] would exclaim, "and we must
behave accordingly."
M. and B. Kalb Kissinger (1974) ch. 7
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
In New York Times Magazine 1 June 1969, p. 11
Power, he [Kissinger] has observed, "is the great aphrodisiac."
New York Times 19 Jan. 1971, p. 12
11.35 Fred Kitchen
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1950
Meredith, we're in!
Catch-phrase originating in The Bailiff (1907 stage sketch)--see J. P.
Gallagher Fred Karno (1971) ch. 9, p. 90
11.36 Lord Kitchener
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1850-1916
You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French
comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a
task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience. Remember
that the honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct. It
will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and perfect
steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly relations
with those whom you are helping in this struggle. The operations in which
you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country,
and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourself
in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.
Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything likely
to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a
disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be trusted;
your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust.
Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly
on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find
temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both
temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you
should avoid any intimacy. Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the
King.
Message to soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (1914), in The
Times 19 Aug. 1914
11.37 Paul Klee
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1940
Eine aktive Linie, die sich frei ergeht, ein Spaziergang um seiner selbst
willen, ohne Ziel. Das agens ist ein Punkt, der sich verschiebt.
An active line on a walk, moving freely without a goal. A walk for walk's
sake.
P„dagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1925) p. 6
Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar.
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
Sch”pferische Konfession (Creative Credo, 1920) in Im Zwischenreich
(1957) (Inward Vision, 1958) p. 5
11.38 Charles Knight and Kenneth Lyle
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Here we are! here we are!! here we are again!!!
There's Pat and Mac and Tommy and Jack and Joe.
When there's trouble brewing,
When there's something doing,
Are we downhearted?
No! Let 'em all come!
Here we are! Here we are again!! (1914 song)
11.39 Frederick Knott
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1916-
Dial "M" for murder.
Title of play (1952)
11.40 Monsignor Ronald Knox
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1957
There once was a man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
In Langford Reed Complete Limerick Book (1924) p. 44 (This reply was
written by an unknown author)
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God.)
The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart,
And we are left with large supplies
Of cold blancmange and rhubarb tart.
In R. Eyres In Three Tongues (1959) p. 130 "After the Party"--a parody of
Kipling 126:9
It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
devil, when he is the only explanation of it.
Let Dons Delight (1939) ch. 8
11.41 Arthur Koestler
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-1983
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the
beating of war drums.
Janus (1978) prologue
Man can leave the earth and land on the moon, but cannot cross from East
to West Berlin. Prometheus reaches for the stars with an insane grin on
his face and a totem-symbol in his hand.
Janus (1978) prologue
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by
any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.
Speech in Holland, 3 Aug. 1929, in Lilly Heber Krishnamurti (1931) ch. 2
11.43 Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Kris Kristofferson 1936-
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose,
Nothin' ain't worth nothin', but it's free.
Me and Bobby McGee (1969 song)
11.44 Joseph Wood Krutch
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1970
The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not
Puritanism but February.
Twelve Seasons (1949) "February"
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for
what you want.
Twelve Seasons (1949) "February"
11.45 Stanley Kubrick
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations
like prostitutes.
In Guardian 5 June 1963
Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth.
Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust.
Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace.
Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Prayer for Peace (1981; adapted from the Upanishads)
12.0 L
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
12.1 Henry Labouchere
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1831-1912
Mr Labouchere's jest about Mr Gladstone laying upon Providence the
responsibility of always placing the ace of trumps up his sleeve was a
good one. In one of his private letters I find the quip worded a little
more pungently. "Who cannot refrain," he says, referring to the then Prime
Minister, "from perpetually bringing an ace down his sleeve, even when he
has only to play fair to win the trick."
A. L. Thorold Life of Henry Labouchere (1913) ch. 15. Cf. Earl Curzon's
Modern Parliamentary Eloquence (1913) p. 25 "I recall a phrase of that
incorrigible cynic Labouchere, alluding to Mr Gladstone's frequent appeals
to a higher power, that he did not object to the old man always having a
card up his sleeve, but he did object to his insinuating that the Almighty
had placed it there."
12.2 Fiorello La Guardia
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1947
When I make a mistake, it's a beaut!
In William Manners Patience and Fortitude (1976) p. 219 (on the
appointment of Herbert O'Brien as a judge in 1936)
12.3 R. D. Laing
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1927-1989
Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.
The Divided Self (1960) ch. 2
Few books today are forgivable.
Politics of Experience (1967) introduction
We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.
Politics of Experience (1967) ch. 3
The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their
circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our
freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of
mankind and to be blown up in turn.
Politics of Experience (1967) ch. 4
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is
potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential
death.
Politics of Experience (1967) ch. 6
The experience and behaviour that gets labelled schizophrenic is a special
strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
Politics of Experience (1967) ch. 5
12.4 Arthur J. Lamb
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1928
She's a bird in a gilded cage.
Title of song (1900; music by Harry von Tilzer)
To put it vulgarly, the whole trouble with a folk song is that once you
have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it
over again and play it rather louder.
Music Ho! (1934) ch. 3
The average English critic is a don manqu‚, hopelessly parochial when not
exaggeratedly teutonophile, over whose desk must surely hang the motto
(presumably in Gothic lettering) "Above all no enthusiasm."
Opera Dec. 1950
12.6 Giuseppe di Lampedusa
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1957
Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come Љ, bisogna che tutto cambi.
If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.
Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1957) p. 33
12.7 Sir Osbert Lancaster
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1986
Today, when the passer-by is a little unnerved at being suddenly
confronted with a hundred and fifty accurate reproductions of Anne
Hathaway's cottage, each complete with central heating and garage, he
should pause to reflect on the extraordinary fact that all over the
country the latest and most scientific methods of mass-production are
being utilized to turn out a stream of old oak beams, leaded window-panes
and small discs of bottle-glass, all structural devices which our
ancestors lost no time in abandoning as soon as an increase in wealth and
knowledge enabled them to do so.
Pillar to Post (1938) "Stockbroker's Tudor"
Bert Lance believes he can save Uncle Sam billions if he can get the
government to adopt a single motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." He
explains: "That's the trouble with government: Fixing things that aren't
broken and not fixing things that are broken."
Nation's Business 27 May 1977
12.9 Andrew Lang
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1844-1912
St Andrews by the Northern sea,
A haunted town it is to me!
Ballades and Verses Vain (1884) p. 79
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
Poetical Works (1923) vol. 2, "The Odyssey"
If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They too shall perish unconsoled.
I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.
Poetical Works (1923) vol. 2, "Brahma" (a parody of Emerson--see Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 206:17)
12.10 Julia Lang
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1921-
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.
Introduction to stories on Listen with Mother, BBC Radio programme,
1950-1982 (sometimes "Then I'll begin")
12.11 Suzanne K. Langer
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1895-1985
Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.
Mind (1967) vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 4
12.12 Ring Lardner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1933
Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.
Shut up he explained.
The Young Immigrunts (1920) ch. 10
12.13 Philip Larkin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1922-1985
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
High Windows (1974) "High Windows"
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can't quite name.
High Windows (1974) "The Old Fools"
Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
High Windows (1974) "Homage to a Government"
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
High Windows (1974) "Homage to a Government"
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
High Windows (1974) "This Be The Verse"
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
High Windows (1974) "This Be The Verse"
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)--
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
High Windows (1974) "Annus Mirabilis"
Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
The Less Deceived (1955) "Church Going"
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
The Less Deceived (1955) "Church Going"
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison--
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
The Less Deceived (1955) "Toads"
Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
The Less Deceived (1955) "I Remember, I Remember"
Far too many [of the books entered for the 1977 Booker Prize] relied on
the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end.
New Fiction no. 15, Jan. 1978
Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.
Reply to question "Do you think people go around feeling they haven't got
out of life what life has to offer?"- Required Writing (1983) p. 47
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "Toads Revisited"
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat.
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "The Whitsun Weddings"
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "Days"
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "MCMXIV"
Don't read too much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store,
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "Study of Reading Habits"
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "Dockery & Son"
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
The Whitsun Weddings (1964) "An Arundel Tomb"
12.14 Sir Harry Lauder
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1950
Keep right on to the end of the road,
Keep right on to the end.
Tho' the way be long, let your heart be strong,
Keep right on round the bend.
Tho' you're tired and weary,
Still journey on
Till you come to your happy abode,
Where all you love you've been dreaming of
Will be there at the end of the road.
The End of the Road (1924 song)
I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
She's as pure as the lily in the dell.
She's as sweet as the heather, the bonnie bloomin' heather--
Mary, ma Scotch Bluebell.
I Love a Lassie (1905 song)
It's nice to get up in the mornin' (but it's nicer to lie in bed).
Title of song (1913)
Roamin' in the gloamin',
On the bonnie banks o' Clyde.
Roamin' in the gloamin'
Wae my lassie by my side.
Roamin' in the Gloamin' (1911 song)
12.15 Stan Laurel (Arthur Stanley Jefferson)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1965
Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.
Another Fine Mess (1930 film; words spoken by Oliver Hardy in many Laurel
and Hardy films: often "another fine mess")
Why don't you do something to help me?
Drivers' Licence Sketch (1947), in J. McCabe Comedy World of Stan Laurel
(1974) p. 107 (words spoken by Oliver Hardy)
12.16 James Laver
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1975
The same costume will be
Indecent ... 10 years before its time
Shameless ... 5 years before its time
Outr‚ (daring) ... 1 year before its time
Smart
Dowdy ... 1 year after its time
Hideous ... 10 years after its time
Ridiculous ... 20 years after its time
Amusing ... 30 years after its time
Quaint ... 50 years after its time
Charming ... 70 years after its time
Romantic ... 100 years after its time
Beautiful ... 150 years after its time
Taste and Fashion (1937) ch. 18
12.17 Andrew Bonar Law
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1858-1923
See Bonar Law (2.100)
12.18 D. H. Lawrence
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1930
Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?
The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans
Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Cypresses"
Men! The only animal in the world to fear!
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Mountain Lion"
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Snake"
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Snake"
Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling
invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the
snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up
England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is
that watery it's a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but
frog-spawn--the gibberers! God, how I hate them!
Letter to Edward Garnett, 3 July 1912, in Collected Letters (1962) vol. 1,
p. 134
I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.
Letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith,?25 Nov. 1913, in Collected Letters (1962)
vol. 1, p. 246
The dead don't die. They look on and help.
Letter to J. Middleton Murry, 2 Feb. 1923, in Collected Letters (1962)
vol. 2, p. 736
The autumn always gets me badly, as it breaks into colours. I want to go
south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one
like a snow-leopard waiting to pounce. The heart of the North is dead,
and the fingers of cold are corpse fingers.
Letter to J. Middleton Murry, 3 Oct. 1924, in Collected Letters (1962)
vol. 2, p. 812
I'd like to write an essay on [Arnold] Bennett--sort of pig in clover.
Letter to Aldous Huxley, 27 Mar. 1928, in Collected Letters (1962) vol. 2,
p. 1048
My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags
and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in
the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.
Letter to Aldous and Maria Huxley, 15 Aug. 1928, in Collected Letters
(1962) vol. 2, p. 1074
To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.
Etruscan Places (1932) "Cerveteri"
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) ch. 1
Some things can't be ravished. You can't ravish a tin of sardines.
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) ch. 8
John Thomas says good-night to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a
hopeful heart.
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) ch. 19
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
And the long journey towards oblivion...
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
Last Poems (1932) "Ship of Death"
Along the avenue of cypresses
All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices
Of linen go the chanting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers.
Look! We Have Come Through! (1917) "Giorno dei Morti"
Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
Look! We Have Come Through! (1917) "Song of a Man who has Come Through"
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
New Poems (1918) "Piano"
Don't be sucked in by the su-superior,
don't swallow the culture bait,
don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier,
do learn to discriminate.
Pansies (1929) "Don'ts"
How beastly the bourgeois is
Especially the male of the species.
Pansies (1929) "How Beastly the Bourgeois Is"
I never saw a wild thing
Sorry for itself.
Pansies (1929) "Self-Pity"
For while we have sex in the mind, we truly have none in the body.
Pansies (1929) "Leave Sex Alone"
When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.
Pansies (1929) "When I Read Shakespeare"
Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.
Phoenix (1936) "Pornography and Obscenity" ch. 3
The very first copy of The White Peacock that was ever sent out, I put
into my mother's hands when she was dying. She looked at the outside, and
then at the title-page, and then at me, with darkening eyes. And though
she loved me so much, I think she doubted whether it could be much of a
book, since no one more important than I had written it. Somewhere, in the
helpless privacies of her being, she had wistful respect for me. But for
me in the face of the world, not much. This David would never get a stone
across at Goliath. And why try? Let Goliath alone! Anyway, she was beyond
reading my first immortal work. It was put aside, and I never wanted to
see it again. She never saw it again.
After the funeral, my father struggled through half a page, and it might
as well have been Hottentot.
"And what dun they gi'e thee for that, lad?"
"Fifty pounds, father."
"Fifty pounds!" He was dumbfounded, and looked at me with shrewd eyes, as
if I were a swindler. "Fifty pounds! An' tha's niver done a day's hard
work in thy life."
Phoenix (1936) p. 232
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic
is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) ch. 1
"Be a good animal, true to your instincts," was his motto.
White Peacock (1911) pt. 2, ch. 2
Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just
uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?
Women in Love (1920) ch. 11
12.19 T. E. Lawrence
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1930
Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper to escape the
life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.
The Mint (1955) pt. 1, ch. 4
The seven pillars of wisdom.
Title of book (1926). Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 53:27
I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my
will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house, that your eyes
might be shining for me
When we came.
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) dedication "to S.A."
12.20 Sir Edmund Leach
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-
Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow
privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.
BBC Reith Lectures, 1967, in Listener 30 Nov. 1967
12.21 Stephen Leacock
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1869-1944
The parent who could see his boy as he really is, would shake his head and
say: "Willie, is no good; I'll sell him."
Essays and Literary Studies (1916) "Lot of a Schoolmaster"
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human
intelligence long enough to get money from it.
Garden of Folly (1924) "The Perfect Salesman"
I am what is called a professor emeritus--from the Latin e, "out," and
meritus, "so he ought to be."
Here are my Lectures (1938) ch. 14
There are no handles to a horse, but the 1910 model has a string to each
side of its face for turning its head when there is anything you want it
to see.
Literary Lapses (1910) "Reflections on Riding"
I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day
die, which is not so.
Literary Lapses (1910) "Insurance up to Date"
Get your room full of good air, then shut up the windows and keep it. It
will keep for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the time. Let
them rest.
Literary Lapses (1910) "How to Live to be 200"
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and
kill something. Not that he's cruel. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It's not big
enough.
My Remarkable Uncle (1942) p. 73
Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself
upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
Nonsense Novels (1911) "Gertrude the Governess"
A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on
Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of
moral effort.
Over the Footlights (1923) "Why I Refuse to Play Golf"
The general idea, of course, in any first-class laundry, is to see that no
shirt or collar ever comes back twice.
Winnowed Wisdom (1926) ch. 6
If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system
seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy
process seriously, you must turn on, tune in and drop out.
Lecture, June 1966, in Politics of Ecstasy (1968) ch. 21
12.23 F. R. Leavis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-1978
It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great--the major
novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that
they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and
readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness
they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.
The Great Tradition (1948) ch. 1
The Sitwells belong to the history of publicity rather than of poetry.
New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) ch. 2
12.24 Fran Lebowitz
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in
fact, barely presentable.
Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 6
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.
Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.
Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 6
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 101
Food is an important part of a balanced diet.
Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 110
Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals.
To actual women, it is merely a good excuse not to play football.
Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 144
Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?
Mysli Nieuczesane (Unkempt Thoughts, 1962) p. 78
12.26 John le Carr‚ (David John Moore Cornwell)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1931-
The spy who came in from the cold.
Title of novel (1963)
12.27 Le Corbusier (Charles ђdouard Jeanneret)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1965
Une maison est une machine-…-habiter.
A house is a machine for living in.
Vers une architecture (Towards an Architecture, 1923) p. ix
12.28 Harper Lee
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a
sin to kill a mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) ch. 10
12.29 Laurie Lee
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-
I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with
a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
Cider with Rosie (1959) p. 9
Such a morning it is when love
leans through geranium windows
and calls with a cockerel's tongue.
When red-haired girls scamper like roses
over the rain-green grass,
and the sun drips honey.
Sun is my Monument (1947) "Day of these Days"
12.30 Ernest Lehman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Somebody up there likes me.
Title of film (1956)
Sweet smell of success.
Title of book and film (1957)
12.31 Tom Lehrer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into
it.
Preamble to song "We Will All Go Together When We Go," in An Evening
Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1953 record album)
Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes but plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!
Lobachevski (1953 song)
And we will all go together when we go--
Every Hottentot and every Eskimo.
We Will All Go Together When We Go (1953 song)
12.32 Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jerry Leiber 1933-
Mike Stoller 1933-
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog,
Cryin' all the time.
Hound Dog (1956 song)
12.33 Fred W. Leigh
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
d. 1924
There was I, waiting at the church,
Waiting at the church, waiting at the church,
When I found he'd left me in the lurch,
Lor, how it did upset me!
All at once he sent me round a note,
Here's the very note,
This is what he wrote--
"Can't get away to marry you today,
My wife won't let me!"
Waiting at the Church (My Wife Won't Let Me) (1906 song; music by Henry
E. Pether)
12.34 Fred W. Leigh, Charles Collins, and Lily Morris
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Fred W. Leigh d. 1924
Why am I always the bridesmaid,
Never the blushing bride?
Why Am I Always the Bridesmaid? (1917 song)
12.35 Fred W. Leigh and George Arthurs
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Fred W. Leigh d. 1924
A little of what you fancy does you good.
Title of song (1915)
12.36 Curtis E. LeMay
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-1990
My solution to the problem would be to tell them [the North Vietnamese]
frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression,
or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.
Mission with LeMay (1965) p. 565
12.37 Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1924
We must now set about building a proletarian socialist state in Russia.
Speech in Petrograd, 7 Nov. 1917, in Collected Works (1964) vol. 26, p.
240
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.
Report to 8th Congress, 1920, in Collected Works (ed. 5) vol. 42, p. 30
He [George Bernard Shaw] is a good man fallen among Fabians.
In Arthur Ransome Six Weeks in Russia in 1919 (1919) "Notes of
Conversations with Lenin"
It is true that liberty is precious--so precious that it must be rationed.
In Sidney and Beatrice Webb Soviet Communism (1936) p. 1036
No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. No, Democracy is a
State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority,
that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class
against the other, by one part of the population against another.
State and Revolution (1919) ch. 4
While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom
there will be no State.
State and Revolution (1919) ch. 5
12.38 John Lennon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1940-1980
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
Living for today.
Imagine (1971 song)
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you,
if you'll just rattle your jewellery.
At Royal Variety Performance, 4 Nov. 1963, in R. Colman John Winston
Lennon (1984) pt. 1, ch. 11
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about
that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're [the Beatles are] more
popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first--rock 'n' roll or
Christianity.
Interview with Maureen Cleave in Evening Standard 4 Mar. 1966. Cf. Zelda
Fitzgerald
12.39 John Lennon and Paul McCartney
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
John Lennon 1940-1980
Paul McCartney 1942-
All you need is love.
Title of song (1967)
Back in the USSR.
Title of song (1968)
For I don't care too much for money,
For money can't buy me love.
Can't Buy Me Love (1964 song)
I heard the news today, oh boy.
Four thousand holes in Blackburn Lancashire.
And though the holes were rather small,
They had to count them all.
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
I'd love to turn you on.
A Day in the Life (1967 song)
Give peace a chance.
Title of song (1969)
It's been a hard day's night,
And I've been working like a dog.
A Hard Day's Night (1964 song)
Magical mystery tour.
Title of song and TV film (1967)
She loves you, yeh, yeh, yeh,
And with a love like that, you know you should be glad.
She Loves You (1963 song)
Strawberry fields forever.
Title of song (1967)
She's got a ticket to ride, but she don't care.
Ticket to Ride (1965 song)
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty four?
When I'm Sixty Four (1967 song)
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends.
With a Little Help From My Friends (1967 song)
We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
Yellow Submarine (1966 song)
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Yesterday (1965 song)
12.40 Dan Leno (George Galvin)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1904
Ah! what is man? Wherefore does he why? Whence did he whence? Whither is
he withering?
Dan Leno Hys Booke (1901) ch. 1
12.41 Alan Jay Lerner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-1986
I'm getting married in the morning,
Ding! dong! the bells are gonna chime.
Pull out the stopper;
Let's have a whopper;
But get me to the church on time!
Get Me to the Church on Time (1956 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair;
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't a woman be like that?
A Hymn to Him (1956 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
Ah yes! I remember it well.
I Remember it Well (1958 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
I've grown accustomed to the trace
Of something in the air;
Accustomed to her face.
I've Grown Accustomed to her Face (1956 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
On a clear day (you can see forever).
Title of song from musical On a Clear Day (1965; music by Burton Lane)
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.
The Rain in Spain (1956 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
Thank heaven for little girls!
For little girls get bigger every day.
Thank Heaven for Little Girls (1958 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
All I want is a room somewhere,
Far away from the cold night air,
With one enormous chair;
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
Wouldn't it be Loverly (1956 song; music by Frederick Loewe)
There's only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the
second-best is anything but the second-best.
Golden Notebook (1962) p. 554
When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and
sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his
sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down
the whip.
The Grass is Singing (1950) ch. 8
12.43 Winifred Mary Letts
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1972
I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford
Against a pearl-grey sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men
Who went abroad to die.
Hallow-e'en (1916) "The Spires of Oxford"
12.44 Oscar Levant
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-1972
Epigram: a wisecrack that played Carnegie Hall.
Coronet Sept. 1958
Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.
Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965) ch. 11
I don't drink liquor. I don't like it. It makes me feel good.
Time 5 May 1958
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I
don't know which half.
In David Ogilvy Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) ch. 3
12.47 Ada Leverson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1936
He [Oscar Wilde] seemed at ease and to have the look of the last gentleman
in Europe.
Letters to the Sphinx (1930) p. 34
You don't know a woman until you have had a letter from her.
Tenterhooks (1912) ch. 7
12.48 Bernard Levin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
[Tony] Benn flung himself into the Sixties technology with the enthusiasm
(not to say language) of a newly enrolled Boy Scout demonstrating
knot-tying to his indulgent parents.
The Pendulum Years (1970) ch. 11
I have heard tell of a Professor of Economics who has a sign on the wall
of his study, reading "the future is not what it was." The sentiment was
admirable
unfortunately, the past is not getting any better either.
Sunday Times 22 May 1977
12.49 Claude L‚vi-Strauss
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-
La langue est une raison humaine qui a ses raisons, et que l'homme ne
connaЊt pas.
Language is a form of human reason and has its reasons which are unknown
to man.
La Pens‚e sauvage (The Savage Mind, 1962) ch. 9. Cf. Pascal in Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 369:10
12.50 Cecil Day Lewis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
See C. Day-Lewis (4.11)
12.51 C. S. Lewis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1963
There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.
Screwtape Letters (1942) preface
We have trained them [men] to think of the Future as a promised land which
favoured heroes attain--not as something which everyone reaches at the
rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
Screwtape Letters (1942) no. 25
She's the sort of woman who lives for others--you can always tell the
others by their hunted expression.
Screwtape Letters (1942) no. 26
I remember summing up what I took to be our destiny, in conversation with
my best friend at Chartres, by the formula, "Term, holidays, term,
holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die."
Suprised by Joy (1955) ch. 4
12.52 John Spedan Lewis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1963
Service to customers: never knowingly undersold.
Slogan (circa 1920) in Partnership for All (1948) ch. 29
12.53 Percy Wyndham Lewis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1957
"The Art of Being Ruled" might be described from some points of view as an
infernal Utopia....An account, comprising many chapters, of the decadence
occupying the trough between the two world wars introduces us to a moronic
inferno of insipidity and decay (which is likewise the inferno of "The
Apes of God").
Rude Assignment (1950) ch. 31
Gertrude Stein's prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding. We can
represent it as a cold suet-roll of fabulously-reptilian length. Cut it at
any point, it is the same thing; the same heavy, sticky, opaque mass all
through, and all along. It is weighted, projected, with a sibylline urge.
It is mournful and monstrous, composed of dead and inanimate material. It
is all fat, without nerve. Or the evident vitality that informs it is
vegetable rather than animal. Its life is a low-grade, if tenacious one;
of the sausage, by-the-yard, variety.
Time and Western Man (1927) pt. 1, ch. 13
12.54 Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sam M. Lewis 1885-1959
Joe Young 1889-1939
How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm (after they've seen Paree)?
Title of song (1919; music by Walter Donaldson)
12.55 Sinclair Lewis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1951
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and
very dead.
The American Fear of Literature (Nobel Prize Address, 12 Dec. 1930), in
H. Frenz Literature 1901-1967 (1969) p. 285
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April,
1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor
poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than
people could afford to pay.
Babbitt (1922) ch. 1
To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor
car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate
ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore.
Babbitt (1922) ch. 3
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums
living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the
successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other
decent business man.
Babbitt (1922) ch. 14
It can't happen here.
Title of novel (1935)
12.56 Robert Ley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1945
Kraft durch Freude.
Strength through joy.
German Labour Front slogan, in The Times 30 Nov. 1933, p. 13
He [Liberace] begins to belabour the critics announcing that he doesn't
mind what they say but that poor George [his brother] "cried all the way
to the bank."
Collier's 17 Sept. 1954 (Cf. Liberace's Autobiography (1973) ch. 2: "When
the reviews are bad I tell my staff that they can join me as I cry all the
way to the bank")
At one early, glittering dinner party at Buckingham Palace, the trembling
hand of a nervous waiter spilled a spoonful of decidedly hot soup down my
neck. How could I manage to ease his mind and turn his embarrassed
apologies into a smile, except to put on a pretended frown and say,
without thinking: "Never darken my Dior again!"
Every Other Inch a Lady (1973) ch. 14
12.59 R. M. Lindner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-1956
Rebel without a cause...the hypnoanalysis of a criminal psychopath.
Title of book (1944)
Booth led boldly with his big brass drum--
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come."
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Walking Lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale--
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-power frail:--
Vermin-eaten saints with moldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death--
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Collected Poems (1934) "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913)
Booth died blind and still by faith he trod,
Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.
Collected Poems (1934) "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1913)
Then I saw the congo, creeping through the black,
Cutting through the forest with a golden track.
The Congo and Other Poems (1922) "The Congo" (1914) pt. 1
12.63 Eric Linklater
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1974
"There won't be any revolution in America," said Isadore. Nikitin agreed.
"The people are all too clean. They spend all their time changing their
shirts and washing themselves. You can't feel fierce and revolutionary in
a bathroom."
Juan in America (1931) bk. 5, pt. 3
12.64 Art Linkletter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-
The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence and
obsolescence.
A Child's Garden of Misinformation (1965) ch. 8
12.65 Walter Lippmann
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1974
Mr Coolidge's genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It
is far from being an indolent activity. It is a grim, determined, alert
inactivity which keeps Mr Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever
worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such
unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the
task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr
Coolidge.
Men of Destiny (1927) p. 12
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the
conviction and the will to carry on.
New York Herald Tribune 14 Apr. 1945
12.66 Joan Littlewood and Charles Chilton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Peace is indivisible.
Note to the Allies, 25 Feb. 1920, in A. U. Pope Maxim Litvinoff (1943) p.
234
12.68 Ken Livingstone
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1945-
The problem is that many MPs never see the London that exists beyond the
wine bars and brothels of Westminster.
The Times 19 Feb. 1987
12.69 Richard Llewellyn (Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-1983
How green was my valley.
Title of book (1939)
12.70 Jack Llewelyn-Davies
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1959
Little Mary [by J.M. Barrie] opened at Wyndham's Theatre on September
24th, 1903, and...it contained a sprinkling of lines contributed by the
boys, including a remark from Jack [Llewelyn-Davies]. When stuffing
himself with cakes at tea, Sylvia had warned him, "You'll be sick
tomorrow." "I'll be sick tonight," replied Jack cheerily.
Andrew Birkin J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (1979) p. 99
12.71 David Lloyd George (Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1863-1945
Negotiating with de Valera...is like trying to pick up mercury with a
fork.
In M. J. MacManus Eamon de Valera (1944) ch. 6 (to which de Valera
replied, "Why doesn't he use a spoon?")
This [The House of Lords] is the leal and trusty mastiff which is to watch
over our interests, but which runs away at the first snarl of the trade
unions....A mastiff? It is the right hon. Gentleman's [Mr Balfour's]
poodle.
Hansard 26 June 1907, col. 1429
Those are the conditions of the armistice. Thus at eleven o'clock this
morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible War that has ever
scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came
to an end all wars.
Hansard 11 Nov. 1918, col. 2463. Cf. H. G. Wells 225:4
Winston was nervous before a speech, but he was not shy. L.G. said he
himself was both nervous and shy. Winston would go up to his Creator and
say that he would very much like to meet His Son, about Whom he had heard
a great deal and, if possible, would like to call on the Holy Ghost.
Winston loved meeting people.
A. J. Sylvester Diary 2 Jan. 1937, in Life with Lloyd George (1975) p. 166
He [Ramsay MacDonald] had sufficient conscience to bother him, but not
sufficient to keep him straight.
In A. J. Sylvester Life with Lloyd George (1975) p. 216
A fully-equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts; and
dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer.
Speech at Newcastle, 9 Oct. 1909, in The Times 11 Oct. 1909
The great peaks of honour we had forgotten--Duty, Patriotism, and--clad in
glittering white--the great pinnacle of Sacrifice, pointing like a rugged
finger to Heaven.
Speech at Queen's Hall, London, 19 Sept. 1914, in The Times 20 Sept. 1914
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
Speech at Wolverhampton, 23 Nov. 1918, in The Times 25 Nov. 1918
M. Clemenceau...is one of the greatest living orators, but he knows that
the finest eloquence is that which gets things done and the worst is that
which delays them.
Speech at Paris Peace Conference, 18 Jan. 1919, in The Times 20 Jan. 1919
The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics.
In Observer 8 Jan. 1933
What were politicians? A politician was a person with whose politics you
did not agree. When you did agree, he was a statesman.
Speech at Central Hall, Westminster, 2 July 1935, in The Times 3 July 1935
12.72 David Lodge
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1935-
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children.
Life is the other way round.
The British Museum is Falling Down (1965) ch. 4
12.73 Frank Loesser
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-1969
See what the boys in the back room will have
And tell them I'm having the same.
Boys in the Back Room (1939 song; music by Frederick Hollander)
I'd love to get you
On a slow boat to China,
All to myself, alone.
Slow Boat to China (1948 song)
Spring will be a little late this year.
Title of song (1944)
12.74 Jack London (John Griffith London)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1916
The call of the wild.
Title of novel (1903)
12.75 Alice Roosevelt Longworth
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1884-1980
[Warren] Harding was not a bad man. He was just a slob.
Crowded Hours (1933) ch. 20
If you haven't got anything good to say about anyone come and sit by me.
Maxim embroidered on a cushion, in Michael Teague Mrs L: Conversations
with Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1981) p. xi
12.76 Frederick Lonsdale
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1954
"Don't keep finishing your sentences," he said to me once when I was
telling him something; "I'm not a bloody fool."
Frances Donaldson Child of the Twenties (1959) p. 11
She said she always believed in the old addage, "Leave them while you're
looking good."
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) ch. 1
So I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because
kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and
safire bracelet lasts forever.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) ch. 4
You have got to be a Queen to get away with a hat like that.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) ch. 4
Fun is fun but no girl wants to laugh all of the time.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) ch. 4
So then Dr Froyd said that all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions
and get some sleep.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) ch. 5
So then he said that he used to be a member of the choir himself, so who
was he to cast the first rock at a girl like I.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) ch. 5
A las cinco de la tarde.
Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
Un ni¤o trajo la blanca s bana
a las cinco de la tarde.
At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
Llanto por Ignacio S nchez MejЎas(Lament for Ignacio S nchez MejЎas,
1935) "La Cogida y la muerte"
Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento.
Verde ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la monta¤a.
Green how I love you green.
Green wind.
Green boughs.
The ship on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Romances, 1924-1927) "Romance Son mbulo"
12.79 Konrad Lorenz
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1903-1989
љberhaupt ist es fЃr den Forscher ein guter Morgensport, t„glich vor dem
FrЃhstЃck eine Lieblingshypothese einzustampfen--das erh„lt jung.
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet
hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
Das sogennante B”se(The So-Called Evil, 1963; translated 1966 by Marjorie
Latzke as On Aggression) ch. 2
12.80 Joe Louis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-1981
He [Billy Conn] can run, but he can't hide.
In New York Herald Tribune 9 June 1946
12.81 Terry Lovelock
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.
Slogan for Heineken lager, 1975 onwards, in Nigel Rees Slogans (1982) p.
16
12.82 Robert Loveman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1864-1923
It isn't raining rain to me,
It's raining violets.
Gates of Silence (1903) "Song" (words adapted by Buddy De Sylva in 1921
song April Showers ; music by Louis Silver)
12.83 David Low
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1963
I have never met anyone who wasn't against war. Even Hitler and Mussolini
were, according to themselves.
New York Times Magazine 10 Feb. 1946
And the softness of my body will be guarded by embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
Men, Women and Ghosts (1916) "Patterns"
I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment
with him tonight in Samarra.
Sheppy (1933) act 3
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914) title poem
12.85 Robert Lowell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-1977
We feel the machine slipping from our hands
As if someone else were steering;
If we see light at the end of the tunnel,
It's the light of the oncoming train.
Day by Day (1977) "Since 1939." Cf. Paul Dickson
My eyes have seen what my hand did.
The Dolphin (1973) "Dolphin"
The aquarium is gone.
Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
For the Union Dead (1964) title poem
These are the tranquillized Fifties,
and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seed-time?
I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,
and made my manic statement,
telling off the state and president, and then
sat waiting sentence in the bull pen
beside a Negro boy with curlicues
of marijuana in his hair.
Life Studies (1956) "Memories of West Street and Lepke"
I saw the spiders marching through the air,
Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day
In latter August when the hay
Came creaking to the barn.
Poems 1938-1949 (1950) "Mr Edwards and the Spider"
This is death.
To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death.
Poems 1938-1949 (1950) "Mr Edwards and the Spider"
The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.
Poems 1938-1949 (1950) "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket"
12.86 L. S. Lowry
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1976
I'm a simple man, and I use simple materials.
In Mervyn Levy Paintings of L. S. Lowry (1975) p. 11
To be a judge you don't have to know about books, you have to be skilled
at picking shrapnel out of your head.
In Observer 17 Nov. 1985 (comment on the Booker Prize)
12.92 Sir Edwin Lutyens
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1869-1944
I had proposed that we should lunch together at the Garrick Club, because
I had obviously to ask father if he had any serious objection to the
writing or the writer of this essay. But, when I broached the matter, he
merely mumbled in obvious embarrassment: "Oh, my!"--just as his father
was used to do. Then, as the fish was served, he looked at me seriously
over the rims of his two pairs of spectacles and remarked: "The piece of
cod passeth all understanding"!
Robert Lutyens Sir Edwin Lutyens (1942) p. 74
12.93 Rosa Luxemburg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1871-1919
Freiheit ist immer nur Freiheit des anders Denkenden.
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks
differently.
Die Russische Revolution (The Russian Revolution, 1918) sec. 4
12.94 Lady Lytton (Pamela Frances Audrey, Countess of Lytton)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1971
The first time you meet Winston [Churchill] you see all his faults and the
rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.
Letter to Sir Edward Marsh, Dec. 1905, in Edward Marsh A Number of People
(1939) ch. 8
13.0 M
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
13.1 Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Battles and sex are the only free diversions in slum life. Couple them
with drink, which costs money, and you have the three principal outlets
for that escape complex which is for ever working in the tenement
dweller's subconscious mind.
No Mean City (1935) ch. 4
13.2 Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Charles MacArthur 1895-1956
Ben Hecht 1894-1964
The son of a bitch stole my watch!
Front Page (1928) last line
13.3 General Douglas MacArthur
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1880-1964
In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.
Congressional Record 19 Apr. 1951, vol. 97, pt. 3, p. 4125
The President of the United States ordered me to break through the
Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose,
as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan. A
primary purpose of this is relief of the Philippines. I came through and I
shall return.
Statement in Adelaide, 20 Mar. 1942, in New York Times 21 Mar. 1942, p. 1
13.4 Dame Rose Macaulay
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1958
"Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this
animal on her return from High Mass.
Towers of Trebizond (1956) p. 9
13.5 General Anthony McAuliffe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1975
Nuts!
Response to German demand to surrender at Bastogne, Belgium, 22 Dec.
1944, in New York Times 28 Dec. 1944, p. 4, and 30 Dec. 1944, p. 1
13.6 Sir Desmond MacCarthy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1877-1952
A biographer is an artist who is on oath, and anyone who knows anything
about artists, knows that that is almost a contradiction in terms.
Memories (1953) "Lytton Strachey and the Art of Biography"
The whole of art is an appeal to a reality which is not without us but in
our minds.
Theatre (1954) "Diction and Realism"
13.7 Joe McCarthy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
You made me love you,
I didn't want to do it.
You Made Me Love You (1913 song; music by James V. Monaco)
13.8 Joseph McCarthy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1957
McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled.
Speech in Wisconsin, 1952, in Richard Rovere Senator Joe McCarthy (1973)
p. 8
13.9 Mary McCarthy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-1989
I once said in an interview that every word she [Lillian Hellman] writes
is a lie, including "and" and "the."
New York Times 16 Feb. 1980, p. 12
When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the
Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been
Europeans.
On the Contrary (1961) "America the Beautiful"
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe
is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.
On the Contrary (1961) "America the Beautiful"
There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by
those who have perceived them without noticing. A truth is something that
everyone can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along.
On the Contrary (1961) "Vita Activa"
In violence, we forget who we are.
On the Contrary (1961) "Characters in Fiction "
If someone tells you he is going to make a "realistic decision," you
immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.
On the Contrary (1961) "American Realist Playwrights"
13.10 Paul McCartney
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1942-
He [John Lennon] could be a manoeuvring swine, which no one ever realized.
In Hunter Davies The Beatles (1985) p. 469
See also John Lennon (12.38)
13.11 David McCord
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1897-
By and by
God caught his eye.
Bay Window Ballads (1935) "Remainders" (epitaph for a waiter)
They shoot horses don't they.
Title of novel (1935)
13.13 John McCrae
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1918
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Punch 8 Dec. 1915 "In Flanders Fields"
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow.
Punch 8 Dec. 1915, "In Flanders Fields"
The heart is a lonely hunter.
Title of novel (1940; taken from The Lonely Hunter (1896), a poem by
"Fiona Macleod" (William Sharp): "My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts
on a lonely hill")
I'll ha'e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet--it's the only way I ken
To dodge the curst conceit o' bein' richt
That damns the vast majority o' men.
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) p. 6
He's no a man ava',
And lacks a proper pride,
Gin less than a' the world
Can ser' him for a bride!
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) p. 36
Yes, tomorrow every Duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me!
Comment after forming the National Government, 25 Aug. 1931, in Philip
Viscount Snowden Autobiography (1934) vol. 2, p. 957
If God were to come to me and say "Ramsay, would you rather be a country
gentleman than a prime minister?," I should reply, "Please God, a country
gentleman."
In Harold Nicolson Diary 5 Oct. 1930, in Diaries and Letters (1966) p. 57
We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.
In Observer 4 May 1930
13.18 A. G. Macdonell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-
England, their England.
Title of novel (1933)
13.19 John McEnroe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1959-
You cannot be serious!
Said to tennis umpire at Wimbledon, early 1980 s
This must be the pits.
Comment after disagreement with Wimbledon umpire, in Sun 23 June 1981
13.20 Arthur McEwen
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
d. 1907
"What we're after," said Arthur McEwen, "is the 'gee-whiz' emotion."
Pressed for further explanation, he said: "We run our paper so that when
the reader opens it he says: 'Gee-whiz!' An issue is a failure which
doesn't make him say that."
Colliers 18 Feb. 1911
13.21 Roger McGough
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1937-
Let me die a youngman's death
Not a clean & in-between-
The-sheets, holy-water death,
Not a famous-last-words
Peaceful out-of-breath death.
"Let Me Die a Youngman's Death" in Edward Lucie Smith (ed.) The Liverpool
Scene (1967) p. 47
Girls are simply the prettiest things
My cat and i believe
And we're always saddened
When it's time for them to leave
We watch them titivating
(that often takes a while)
and though they keep us waiting
My cat and i just smile
We like to see them to the door
Say how sad it couldn't last
Then my cat and i go back inside
And talk about the past.
Watchwords (1969) "My Cat and i"
13.22 Sir Ian MacGregor
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-
People are now discovering the price of insubordination and insurrection.
And boy, are we going to make it stick!
Comment during the coal-miners' strike, in Sunday Telegraph 10 Mar. 1985
13.23 Jimmy McGregor
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Oh, he's football crazy, he's football mad
And the football it has robbed him o' the wee bit sense he had.
And it would take a dozen skivvies, his clothes to wash and scrub,
Since our Jock became a member of that terrible football club.
Football Crazy (1960 song)
13.24 Dennis McHarrie
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"He died who loved to live," they'll say,
"Unselfishly so we might have today!"
Like hell! He fought because he had to fight;
He died that's all. It was his unlucky night.
In V. Selwyn et al Return to Oasis (1980) pt. 3, p. 172 "Luck"
13.25 Colin MacInnes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-1976
And I thought, "My lord, one thing is certain, and that's that they'll
make musicals one day about the glamour-studded 1950s." And I thought, my
heaven, one thing is certain too, I'm miserable.
Absolute Beginners (1959) p. 81
13.26 Claude McKay
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1948
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O, kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Selected Poems (1953) "If We Must Die"
13.27 Sir Compton Mackenzie
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1883-1972
Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often
find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.
Literature in My Time (1933) ch. 22
You are offered a piece of bread and butter that feels like a damp
handkerchief and sometimes, when cucumber is added to it, like a wet one.
Vestal Fire (1927) bk. 1, ch. 3
I loved Kirk so much, I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude
with a carnation up my nose.
Evidence given at Epsom Magistrates' Court, 6 Dec. 1977, in The Times 7
Dec. 1977
13.29 Alexander Maclaren
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1826-1910
"The Church is an anvil which has worn out many hammers," and the story of
the first collision is, in essentials, the story of all.
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Acts of the Apostles (1907) ch. 4
I'm a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone;
I'm a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own;
I'm a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep;
I love to sit and bay at the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.
Songs to Save a Soul (1915) "Lone Dog"
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a
global village.
Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) p. 31
One matter Englishmen don't think in the least funny is their happy
consciousness of possessing a deep sense of humour.
Mechanical Bride (1951) "The Ballet Luce"
The medium is the message.
Understanding Media (1964) title of ch. 1
The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.
Understanding Media (1964) p. 32
The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain,
unclad and incomplete in the urban compound.
Understanding Media (1964) p. 217
The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of
urban and suburban man.
Understanding Media (1964) p. 224
13.34 Ed McMahon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1923-
And now...heeeeere's Johnny!
Introduction to Johnny Carson on NBC-TV's Tonight show (from 1961; also
used by Jack Nicholson in the 1980 film The Shining)
13.35 Harold Macmillan (Lord Stockton)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1986
He [Aneurin Bevan] enjoys prophesying the imminent fall of the capitalist
system and is prepared to play a part, any part, in its burial, except
that of mute.
In Michael Foot Aneurin Bevan (1962) pt. 1, ch. 5
After a long experience of politics I have never found that there is any
inhibition caused by ignorance as regards criticism.
Hansard 11 July 1963, col. 1411
I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the
action of two tarts.
Comment on the Profumo affair, July 1963, in Anthony Sampson Macmillan
(1967) p. 243
There ain't gonna be no war.
Said at London press conference, 24 July 1955, after Geneva summit, in
News Chronicle 25 July 1955
He [a Foreign Secretary] is forever poised between a clich‚ and an
indiscretion.
In Newsweek 30 Apr. 1956
Even before Mr Heath's troubles of 1972 and 1974, Mr Harold Macmillan was
fond of remarking that there were three bodies no sensible man directly
challenged: the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards and the
National Union of Mineworkers.
Alan Watkins in Observer 22 Feb. 1981
The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London
a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In
different places it takes different forms, but it is happening everywhere.
The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and, whether we like
it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We
must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account
of it.
Speech at Cape Town, 3 Feb. 1960, Pointing the Way (1972) p. 475
Indeed, let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so
good. Go around the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms,
and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my
lifetime--nor indeed ever in the history of this country. What is
beginning to worry some of us is, Is it too good to be true?--or perhaps I
should say, Is it too good to last?
Speech at Bedford, 20 July 1957, in The Times 22 July 1957
I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local
difficulties, and then turn to the wider vision of the Commonwealth.
Statement at London airport on leaving for Commonwealth tour, 7 Jan.
1958, following the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and
others, in The Times 8 Jan. 1958
As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas.
Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original
ideas is sound.
Speech to London Conservatives, 7 Mar. 1961, in The Times 8 Mar. 1961
First of all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture
that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go.
Speech on privatization to the Tory Reform Group, 8 Nov. 1985, in The
Times 9 Nov. 1985
13.36 Louis MacNeice
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1907-1963
Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.
Autumn Journal (1939) p. 49
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its net of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Earth Compels (1938) "Sunlight on the Garden"
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
Earth Compels (1938) "Sunlight on the Garden"
It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Earth Compels (1938) "Bagpipe Music"
It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
Earth Compels (1938) "Bagpipe Music"
It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.
Earth Compels (1938) "Bagpipe Music"
I take a rather common-sense view of poetry. I think that the poet is a
sensitive instrument designed to record anything which interests his mind
or affects his emotions.
Listener 27 July 1939
By a high star our course is set,
Our end is Life. Put out to sea.
London Magazine Feb. 1964 "Thalassa" (poem published posthumously)
And under the totem poles--the ancient terror--
Between the enormous fluted Ionic columns
There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces
The guttural sorrow of the refugees.
Plant and Phantom (1941) "The British Museum Reading Room"
Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
Time was away and somewhere else.
Plant and Phantom (1941) "Meeting Point"
So they were married--to be the more together--
And found they were never again so much together,
Divided by the morning tea,
By the evening paper,
By children and tradesmen's bills.
Plant and Phantom (1941) "Les Sylphides"
Crumbling between the fingers, under the feet,
Crumbling behind the eyes,
Their world gives way and dies
And something twangs and breaks at the end of the street.
Plant and Phantom (1941) "D‚bѓcle"
Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar.
Poems (1935) "Sunday Morning"
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
Poems (1935) "Snow"
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me,
Otherwise kill me.
Springboard (1944) "Prayer Before Birth"
13.37 Salvador de Madariaga
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1886-1978
Since, in the main, it is not armaments that cause wars but wars (or the
fears thereof) that cause armaments, it follows that every nation will at
every moment strive to keep its armament in an efficient state as required
by its fear, otherwise styled security.
Morning Without Noon (1974) pt. 1, ch. 9
13.38 Maurice Maeterlinck
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1862-1949
Il n'y a pas de morts.
There are no dead.
L'Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird, 1909) act 4
13.39 John Gillespie Magee
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1922-1941
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds--and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of--wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew--
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
In K. Rhys More Poems from the Forces (1943) "High Flight"
13.40 Magnus Magnusson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1929-
I've started so I'll finish.
Said when a contestant's time runs out while a question is being put in
Mastermind, BBC television (1972 onwards)
13.41 Sir John Pentland Mahaffy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1839-1919
In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly
occurs.
In W. B. Stanford and R. B. McDowell Mahaffy (1971) ch. 4
13.42 Gustav Mahler
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1911
On seeing Niagara Falls, Mahler exclaimed: "Fortissimo at last!"
K. Blaukopf Gustav Mahler (1973) ch. 8
"I am just going outside and may be some time."
The others nod, pretending not to know.
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
Antarctica (1985) title poem (for the first line, cf. Captain Lawrence
Oates)
13.44 Norman Mailer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1923-
Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no
sentiment.
Cannibals and Christians (1966) p. 51
Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
Dissent Summer 1957, p. 281
Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the
protagonists.
Esquire June 1960
The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each event, and the
paucity of its reverberation.
A Fire on the Moon (1970) pt. 1, ch. 2
So we think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America,
Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little
rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American
backyards.
Marilyn (1973) p. 15
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the Gods, and so awakens
devils to contest his vision.
The Presidential Papers (1976) Special Preface to the 1st Berkeley
Edition
13.45 Bernard Malamud
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-1986
I think I said "All men are Jews except they don't know it." I doubt I
expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an
understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history,
sooner or later, treats all men.
Leslie and Joyce Field (ed.) Bernard Malamud (1975) "An interview with
Bernard Malamud" p. 11
The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is
no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all
biography is ultimately fiction.
Dubin's Lives (1979) p. 20
13.46 George Leigh Mallory
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1886-1924
Because it's there.
Response to question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?," in New
York Times 18 Mar. 1923
Art is a revolt against fate.
Les Voix du silence (Voices of Silence, 1951) pt. 4, ch. 7
13.48 Lord Mancroft (Baron Mancroft)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1914-
Our soft grass and mild climate has enabled us to foster new sports.
Racing, golf, football and particularly cricket--a game which the English,
not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves
some conception of eternity--all owe their development to our climate.
Bees in Some Bonnets (1979) p. 185
We are going to dismantle apartheid ourselves. That programme will be
brought to you by the ANC. Together, hand in hand, with that stick of
matches, with our necklace, we shall liberate this country.
Speech in black townships, 14 Apr. 1986, in Guardian 15 Apr. 1986
Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.
Selected Poems (1973), trans. by D. McDuff p. 129
13.51 Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Herman J. Mankiewicz 1897-1953
Orson Welles 1915-1985
Katherine: What's Rosebud?
Raymond: That's what he said when he died....
Louise: If you could have found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that
would've explained everything.
Thompson: No, I don't think so. No, Mr Kane was a man who got everything
he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get
or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I
don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just
a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece.
Citizen Kane (1941 film)
13.52 Joseph L. Mankiewicz
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-
Fasten your seat-belts, it's going to be a bumpy night.
All About Eve (1950 film; words spoken by Bette Davis)
13.53 Thomas Mann
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1955
Der Tod in Venedig.
Death in Venice.
Title of novella (1912)
Tats„chlich ist unser Sterben mehr eine Angelegenheit der Weiterlebenden
als unserer selbst.
It is a fact that a man's dying is more the survivor's affair than his
own.
Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924) ch. 6, pt. 8
E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare
fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but
there ain't going to be no tea.
Journal May 1917 (1927) p. 69
Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should
I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me.
Journal 29 Jan. 1922 (1927) p. 224
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But
better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
Journal 1922 (1927) p. 243
13.55 Mao Tse-Tung
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1976
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend
is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and
a flourishing socialist culture in our land.
Speech at Peking, 27 Feb. 1957, in Quotations of Chairman Mao (1966)
p. 302
A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an
essay, or painting a picture....A revolution is an insurrection, an act of
violence by which one class overthrows another.
Report, Mar. 1927, in Selected Works (1954) vol. 1, p. 27
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use
to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. Of course, the
atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is
decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon.
Interview with Anne Louise Strong, Aug. 1946, in Selected Works (1961)
vol. 4, p. 100
All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are
terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term
point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really
powerful.
Interview with Anne Louise Strong, Aug. 1946, in Selected Works (1961)
vol. 4, p. 100
Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
Lecture, 1938, in Selected Works (1965) vol. 2, p. 153
Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the
barrel of a gun."
Speech at 6th Plenary Session of 6th Central Committee, 6 Nov. 1938, in
Selected Works (1965) vol. 2, p. 224
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899) "Man with the Hoe"
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
Shoes of Happiness (1915) "Outwitted"
Here comes the judge.
Title of song (1968; written with Dick Alen, Bob Astor, and Sarah Harvey;
subsequently a catch-phrase, often in the form "Here come de judge")
13.58 Johnny Marks
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-1985
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose,
And if you ever saw it,
You would even say it glows.
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1949 song), based on a Robert L. May
story (1939)
13.59 Don Marquis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1937
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and I will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai.
archy and mehitabel (1927) "the song of mehitabel"
procrastination is the
art of keeping
up with yesterday.
archy and mehitabel (1927) "certain maxims of archy"
an optimist is a guy
that has never had
much experience.
archy and mehitabel (1927) "certain maxims of archy"
I have got you out here
in the great open spaces
where cats are cats.
archy and mehitabel (1927) "mehitabel has an adventure"
but wotthehell
archy wotthehell
it s cheerio
my deario that
pulls a lady through.
archy and mehitabel (1927) "cheerio, my deario"
but wotthehell archy wotthehell
jamais triste archy jamais triste
that is my motto.
archy and mehitabel (1927) "mehitabel sees paris"
boss there is always
a comforting thought
in time of trouble when
it is not our trouble
archy does his part (1935) "comforting thoughts"
honesty is a good
thing but
it is not profitable to
its possessor
unless it is
kept under control.
archys life of mehitabel (1933) "archygrams"
did you ever
notice that when
a politician
does get an idea
he usually
gets it all wrong.
archys life of mehitabel (1933) no. 40 "archygrams"
now and then
there is a person born
who is so unlucky
that he runs into accidents
which started to happen
to somebody else.
archys life of mehitabel (1933) "archy says"
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand
Canyon and waiting for the echo.
In E. Anthony O Rare Don Marquis (1962) p. 146
The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs
like an epigram.
In E. Anthony O Rare Don Marquis (1962) p. 354
13.60 Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Anthony Marriott 1931-
Alistair Foot
No sex please--we're British.
Title of play (1971)
13.61 Arthur Marshall
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1910-1989
Oh My! Bertha's got a bang on the boko. Keep a stiff upper lip, Bertha
dear. What, knocked a tooth out? Never mind, dear, laugh it off, laugh it
off; it's all part of life's rich pageant.
The Games Mistress (recorded monologue, 1937)
13.62 Thomas R. Marshall
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1854-1925
What this country needs is a really good 5-cent cigar.
In New York Tribune 4 Jan. 1920, pt. 7, p. 1
13.63 Dean Martin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
In Paul Dickson Official Rules (1978) p. 112
A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces,
An airline ticket to romantic places;
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.
These Foolish Things Remind Me of You (1935 song; music by Jack Strachey
and Harry Link)
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was
convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
In Hector Arce Groucho (1979) p. 188 (a blurb written for S. J. Perelman's
1928 book Dawn Ginsberg's Revenge)
I sent the club a wire stating, Please accept my resignation. I don't want
to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.
Groucho and Me (1959) ch. 26
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
In Leo Rosten People I have Loved, Known or Admired (1970) "Groucho"
13.67 Queen Mary
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1867-1953
"Well, Mr Baldwin!" Queen Mary exclaimed, stepping briskly into the room,
her hands held out before her in a gesture of despair, "this is a pretty
kettle of fish!"
James Pope-Hennessy Life of Queen Mary (1959) pt. 4, ch. 7 (said on
17 Nov. 1936, after Edward VIII had told her he was prepared to give up
the throne to marry Mrs Simpson)
So that's what hay looks like.
James Pope-Hennessy Life of Queen Mary (1959) pt. 4, ch. 8 (said at
Badminton House, where she was evacuated during the Second World War)
13.68 Eric Maschwitz
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1901-1969
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.
Title of song (1940; music by Manning Sherwin)
13.69 John Masefield
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1967
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Ballads (1903) "Cargoes"
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig lead,
Firewood, ironware, and cheap tin trays.
Ballads (1903) "Cargoes"
Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French,
And some'll swallow tay and stuff fit only for a wench.
Ballads (1903) "Captain Stratton's Fancy"
Oh some are fond of fiddles, and a song well sung,
And some are all for music for a lilt upon the tongue;
But mouths were made for tankards, and for sucking at the bung,
Says the old bold mate of Henry Morgan.
Ballads (1903) "Captain Stratton's Fancy"
I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills,
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.
Ballads (1903) "Beauty"
But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me,
Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her
lips.
Ballads (1903) "Beauty"
One road leads to London,
One road runs to Wales,
My road leads me seawards
To the white dipping sails.
Ballads (1903) "Roadways"
In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.
Ballads and Poems (1910) "C.L.M."
Jane brought the bowl of stewing gin
And poured the egg and lemon in,
And whisked it up and served it out
While bawdy questions went about.
Jack chucked her chin, and Jim accost her
With bits out of the "Maid of Gloster."
And fifteen arms went round her waist.
(And then men ask, Are Barmaids Chaste?)
The Everlasting Mercy (1911) st. 26
And he who gives a child a treat
Makes joy-bells ring in Heaven's street.
And he who gives a child a home
Builds palaces in Kingdom come,
And she who gives a baby birth
Brings Saviour Christ again to Earth,
For life is joy, and mind is fruit,
And body's precious earth and root.
The Everlasting Mercy (1911) st. 47
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.
The Everlasting Mercy (1911) st. 86
Death opens unknown doors. It is most grand to die.
Pompey The Great (1910) act 2
And all the way, that wild high crying,
To cold his blood with the thought of dying.
Reynard the Fox (1919) pt. 2, st. 49
The stars grew bright in the winter sky,
The wind came keen with a tang of frost,
The brook was troubled for new things lost,
The copse was happy for old things found,
The fox came home and he went to ground.
Reynard the Fox (1919) pt. 2, st. 137
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902) "Sea Fever"
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902) "Sea Fever"
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted
knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902) "Sea Fever"
It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902) "West Wind"
It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,
Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither nor why.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902) "Tewkesbury Road"
In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.
Widow in Bye Street (1912) ch. 4, p. 66
13.70 Donald Mason
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1913-
Sighted sub, sank same.
Radio message, 28 Jan. 1942, in New York Times 27 Feb. 1942 (on sinking
Japanese submarine in the Atlantic region, the first US naval success in
the war)
13.71 Sir James Mathew
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1830-1908
In England, justice is open to all--like the Ritz Hotel.
In R. E. Megarry Miscellany-at-Law (1955) p. 254
E.T. phone home.
E.T. (1982 film; directed by Steven Spielberg)
13.73 Henri Matisse
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1869-1954
Ce que je r€ve, c'est un art d'‚quilibre, de puret‚, de tranquillit‚, sans
sujet inqui‚tant ou pr‚occupant, qui soit...un l‚nifiant, un calmant
c‚r‚bral, quelque chose d'analogue … un bon fauteuil qui le d‚lasse de ses
fatigues physiques.
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of
troubling or depressing subject matter...a soothing, calming influence on
the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from
physical fatigue.
Notes d'un peintre (Notes of a Painter, 1908) in Dominique Fourcade
ђcrits et propos sur l'art (1972) p. 30
There comes a time in every man's life when he must make way for an older
man.
Remark after he was dropped from the Shadow Cabinet and replaced by an
older man, in Guardian 20 Nov. 1976
13.75 W. Somerset Maugham
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1965
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can
pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit.
It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is
a whole-time job.
Cakes and Ale (1930) ch. 1
This is not so strange when you reflect that from the earliest times the
old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and
before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too,
and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
Cakes and Ale (1930) ch. 11
Poor Henry [James], he's spending eternity wandering round and round a
stately park and the fence is just too high for him to peep over and
they're having tea just too far away for him to hear what the countess is
saying.
Cakes and Ale (1930) ch. 11
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is
that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Circle (1921) act 3
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It
is her favourite form of self-indulgence.
Circle (1921) act 3
"Dying" he [Maugham] said to me, "is a very dull, dreary affair." Suddenly
he smiled. "And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with
it," he added.
Robin Maugham Escape from the Shadows (1972) pt. 5, p. 233
There can be nothing so gratifying to an author as to arouse the respect
and esteem of the reader. Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial
fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
Gentleman in the Parlour (1930) ch. 11
God knows that I have never been that [anti-Semitic]; some of my best
friends both in England and America are Jews.
Letter, May 1946, in Ted Morgan Somerset Maugham (1980) ch. 6
I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each
day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that
I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone
to bed.
Moon and Sixpence (1919) ch. 2
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
Moon and Sixpence (1919) ch. 4
She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of
misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress.
Moon and Sixpence (1919) ch. 16
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that
sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and
vindictive.
Moon and Sixpence (1919) ch. 17
"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her," he said, "but she
can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account."
Moon and Sixpence (1919) ch. 41
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's
mind.
Of Human Bondage (1915) ch. 39
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
Of Human Bondage (1915) ch. 50
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use
of the other five.
Of Human Bondage (1915) ch. 51
It was such a lovely day I thought it was a pity to get up.
Our Betters (1923) act 3
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at
all....They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are
written.
Summing Up (1938) p. 92
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic
and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the
most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and
cruel.
Summing Up (1938) p. 187
Lucky Jim [by Kingsley Amis] is a remarkable novel. It has been greatly
praised and widely read, but I have not noticed that any of the reviewers
have remarked on its ominous significance. I am told that today rather
more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on
a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the
scene....They are scum.
Sunday Times 25 Dec. 1955
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well
but not too wisely.
Writer's Notebook (1949) p. 17 (written in 1896)
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to
have a really affectionate mother.
Writer's Notebook (1949) p. 27 (written in 1896)
13.76 Bill Mauldin
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1921-
I feel like a fugitive from th' law of averages.
Up Front (1945) cartoon caption
13.77 James Maxton
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1885-1946
All I say is, if you cannot ride two horses you have no right in the
circus.
Said at Scottish Independent Labour Party Conference on being told that he
could not be in two parties, in Daily Herald 12 Jan. 1931
13.78 John May
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
You're never alone with a Strand.
Slogan for Strand cigarettes, 1960, in Nigel Rees Slogans (1982) p. 108
As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
The Psycho-ed (1910 play), in Newsweek 15 Jan. 1940
So you're going to Australia! Well, I made twenty thousand pounds on my
tour there, but of course that will never be done again. Still, it's
a wonderful country, and you'll have a good time. What are you going to
sing? All I can say is--sing 'em muck! It's all they can understand!
Advice to Dame Clara Butt, in W. H. Ponder Clara Butt (1928) ch. 12
13.85 H. L. Mencken
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1880-1956
Here, indeed, was his [Calvin Coolidge's] one peculiar Fach, his one
really notable talent. He slept more than any other President, whether by
day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
American Mercury Apr. 1933
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His
failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
Baltimore Evening Sun 9 Dec. 1929
No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records
for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
Chicago Tribune 19 Sept. 1926
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
Chrestomathy (1949) ch. 30
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
Chrestomathy (1949) ch. 30
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry
later. For another thing, they die earlier.
Chrestomathy (1949) ch. 30
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Chrestomathy (1949) ch. 30
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and
deserve to get it good and hard.
Little Book in C major (1916) p. 19
Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Little Book in C major (1916) p. 42
I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink
after dark.
New York Post 18 Sept. 1945
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort
to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and
chemistry.
Notebooks (1956) "Minority Report"
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party
of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
Notebooks (1956) "Minority Report"
All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They
never defend any one or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced
upon them, they tackle it by denouncing some one or something else.
Prejudices (1919) 1st ser., ch. 13
Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious
music.
Prejudices (1922) 3rd ser., ch. 7
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of
the improbable.
Prejudices (1922) 3rd ser., ch. 14
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to
please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely
girl.
Smart Set Dec. 1921
13.86 David Mercer
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1928-1980
A suitable case for treatment.
Title of play (1962) in Three TV Comedies (1966)
13.87 Johnny Mercer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-1976
You've got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
Elim-my-nate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-between.
Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive (1944 song; music by Harold Arlen)
We're drinking my friend,
To the end of a brief episode,
Make it one for my baby
And one more for the road.
One For My Baby (1943 song; music by Harold Arlen)
That old black magic.
Title of song (1942; music by Harold Arlen)
13.88 Bob Merrill
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How much is that doggie in the window?
Title of song (1953)
Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak holds more than his belican.
He takes in his beak
Food enough for a week.
But I'll be darned if I know how the helican.
Nashville Banner 22 Apr. 1913
The dust comes secretly day after day,
Lies on my ledge and dulls my shining things.
But O this dust that I shall drive away
Is flowers and Kings,
Is Solomon's temple, poets, Nineveh.
Verses (1919) "Dusting"
13.91 Princess Michael of Kent
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1945-
I don't enjoy my public obligations. I was not made to cut ribbons and
kiss babies.
Life Nov. 1986
13.92 George Mikes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-
On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table
manners.
How to be an Alien (1946) p. 10
Continental people have sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.
How to be an Alien (1946) p. 25
An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
How to be an Alien (1946) p. 44
13.93 Edna St Vincent Millay
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1892-1950
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Buck in the Snow (1928) "Dirge Without Music"
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light.
A Few Figs From Thistles (1920) "First Fig"
Safe upon solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
A Few Figs From Thistles (1920) "Second Fig"
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923) sonnet 19
Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923) sonnet 22
It's not true that life is one damn thing after another--it's one damn
thing over and over.
Letter to Arthur Davison Ficke, 24 Oct. 1930, in A. R. Macdougal Letters
of Edna St V. Millay (1952) p. 240
Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness--presently
Every bed is narrow.
Second April (1921) "Passer Mortuus Est"
After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?
Second April (1921) "Passer Mortuus Est"
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.
Wine from these Grapes (1934) "Childhood is the Kingdom where Nobody
dies"
13.94 Alice Duer Miller
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1874-1942
I am American bred,
I have seen much to hate here--much to forgive,
But in a world where England is finished and dead,
I do not wish to live.
White Cliffs (1940) p. 70
13.95 Arthur Miller
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1915-
I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His
name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever
lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him.
So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave
like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such
a person.
Death of a Salesman (1949) act 1
Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the
life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you
medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and
a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back--that's an earthquake.
And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're
finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It
comes with the territory.
Death of a Salesman (1949) "Requiem"
I used...to keep a book in which I would talk to myself. One of the
aphorisms I wrote was, "The structure of a play is always the story of how
the birds came home to roost."
Harper's Magazine Aug. 1958
Roslyn: "How do you find your way back in the dark?" Gay nods, indicating
the sky before them: "Just head for that big star straight on. The
highway's under it; take us right home."
The Misfits (1961) ch. 12
A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
In Observer 26 Nov. 1961
13.96 Henry Miller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1980
Even before the music begins there is that bored look on people's faces.
A polite form of self-imposed torture, the concert.
Tropic of Cancer (1934) p. 84
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
Tropic of Cancer (1934) p. 280
13.97 Jonathan Miller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1934-
In fact, I'm not really a Jew. Just Jew-ish. Not the whole hog, you know.
Beyond the Fringe (1960) "Real Class," in Alan Bennett et al. Complete
Beyond the Fringe (1987) p. 84
13.98 Spike Milligan (Terence Alan Milligan)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-
Grytpype-thynne: You silly twisted boy.
Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler in The Goon Show (BBC radio series) 12 Oct.
1954, in Goon Show Scripts (1972) p. 26
Seagoon: Ying tong iddle I po.
Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler in The Goon Show (BBC radio series) 12 Oct.
1954, in Goon Show Scripts (1972) p. 27; catch-phrase also used in The
Ying Tong Song (1956)
He's fallen in the water.
Catch-phrase used by "Little Jim" (Spike Milligan) in The Goon Show (BBC
radio series, used from 1956 onwards)
Bluebottle: You rotten swines. I told you I'd be deaded.
Hastings Flyer in The Goon Show (BBC radio series) 3 Jan. 1956, in Goon
Show Scripts (1972) p. 170
I'm walking backwards for Christmas
Across the Irish Sea.
I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas (1956 song)
Moriarty: Sapristi Nuckoes--do you always drink ink?
Seagoon: Only in the mating season.
Moriarty: Shall we dance?
Napoleon's Piano in The Goon Show (BBC radio series) 11 Oct. 1955, in
Goon Show Scripts (1972) p. 100
Bluebottle: I don't like this game, let's play another game--let's play
doctor and nurses.
The Phantom Head-Shaver in The Goon Show (BBC radio series) 15 Oct. 1954,
in Goon Show Scripts (1972) p. 54 (the catch-phrase was often "I do not
like this game")
Money couldn't buy friends but you got a better class of enemy.
Puckoon (1963) ch. 6
13.99 A. J. Mills, Fred Godfrey, and Bennett Scott
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Take me back to dear old Blighty,
Put me on the train for London town.
Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty (1916 song)
It don't mean a thing
If it ain't got that swing.
It Don't Mean a Thing (1932 song; music by Duke Ellington)
13.101 A. A. Milne
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1956
The more it snows
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom)
On snowing.
And nobody knows
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
Are growing.
House at Pooh Corner (1928) ch. 1
Tiggers don't like honey.
House at Pooh Corner (1928) ch. 2
King John was not a good man--
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
Now We Are Six (1927) "King John's Christmas"
When I was young, we always had mornings like this.
Toad of Toad Hall (1929) act 2, sc. 3 (Milne's dramatization of Kenneth
Grahame's Wind in the Willows)
They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace--
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.
When We Were Very Young (1924) "Buckingham Palace"
John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh--
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.
When We Were Very Young (1924) "Happiness"
James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James
Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he;
"You must never go down to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me."
When We Were Very Young (1924) "Disobedience"
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She's perfectly well and she hasn't a pain,
And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again!
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
When We Were Very Young (1924) "Rice Pudding"
The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
When We Were Very Young (1924) "The King's Breakfast"
The King said
"Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
When We Were Very Young (1924) "The King's Breakfast"
Nobody,
My darling,
Could call me
A fussy man--
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!
When We Were Very Young (1924) "The King's Breakfast"
Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.
When We Were Very Young (1924) "Vespers"
Isn't it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 1
How sweet to be a Cloud
Floating in the Blue!
It makes him very proud
To be a little cloud.
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 1
Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and
he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when
Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited
that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But
don't bother about the bread, please." And for a long time after that he
said nothing...until at last, humming to himself in a rather sticky voice,
he got up, shook Rabbit lovingly by the paw, and said that he must be
going on.
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 2
"Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of
Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 4
Eeyore, the old grey Donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and looked
at himself in the water. "Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is.
Pathetic."
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 6
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie."
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 6
Time for a little something.
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 6
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters
get in the wrong places.
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 6
On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
"Now is it true, or is it not,
"That what is which and which is what?"
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 7
3 Cheers for Pooh!
(For Who?)
For Pooh--
(Why what did he do?)
I thought you knew;
He saved his friend from a wetting!
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) ch. 10
13.102 Lord Milner (Alfred, Viscount Milner)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1854-1925
If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it
is our duty to try to prevent it and to damn the consequences.
Speech at Glasgow, 26 Nov. 1909, in The Times 27 Nov. 1909
13.103 Adrian Mitchell
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1932-
Most people ignore most poetry
because
most poetry ignores most people.
Poems (1964) p. 8
I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall;
I really don't know life at all.
Both Sides Now (1967 song)
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel,
A boutique, and a swinging hot spot.
Big Yellow Taxi (1970 song)
We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.
Woodstock (1969 song)
13.105 Margaret Mitchell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1949
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any
of them.
Gone with the Wind (1936) ch. 38
Scarlett...I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I
can't....My dear, I don't give a damn.
Gone with the Wind (1936) ch. 57 (in Sidney Howard's script for the film
version (1939) this became "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!")
Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is
another day.
Gone with the Wind (1936) ch. 57 (closing words)
According to one of my correspondents, Jessica Mitford was overheard to
remark, "I have nothing against undertakers personally. It's just that
I wouldn't want one to bury my sister."
Saturday Review 1 Feb. 1964
"Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry" is an
aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like
an Indian widow.
Love in a Cold Climate (1949) pt. 1, ch. 2
"Twenty three and a quarter minutes past," Uncle Matthew was saying
furiously, "in precisely six and three-quarter minutes the damned fella
will be late."
Love in a Cold Climate (1949) pt. 1, ch. 13
An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut
off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.
Noblesse Oblige (1956) p. 39
I have only ever read one book in my life, and that is White Fang It's so
frightfully good I've never bothered to read another.
Pursuit of Love (1945) ch. 9
Uncle Matthew's four years in France and Italy between 1914 and 1918 had
given him no great opinion of foreigners. "Frogs," he would say, "are
slightly better than Huns or Wops, but abroad is unutterably bloody and
foreigners are fiends."
Pursuit of Love (1945) ch. 15
13.109 Wilson Mizner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1933
Among his [Mizner's] philosophical maxims were "Be nice to people on your
way up because you'll meet 'em on your way down," "Treat a whore like
a lady and a lady like a whore," and "If you steal from one author, it's
plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."
Alva Johnston The Legendary Mizners (1953) ch. 4
Mizner's comment on Hollywood, "It's a trip through a sewer in a
glass-bottomed boat," was converted by Mayor Jimmy Walker into "A reformer
is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat."
Alva Johnston The Legendary Mizners (1953) ch. 4
13.110 Walter Mondale
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
See Cliff Freeman (6.46)
13.111 William Cosmo Monkhouse
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1840-1901
There once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at a time,
When asked "Why a third?"
He replied, "One's absurd!
And bigamy, Sir, is a crime!"
Nonsense Rhymes (1902)
13.112 Harold Monro
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1932
When the tea is brought at five o'clock,
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
Is suddenly purring there.
Children of Love (1914) "Milk for the Cat"
13.113 Marilyn Monroe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-1962
Asked if she really had nothing on in the [calendar] photograph, Marilyn,
her blue eyes wide, purred: "I had the radio on."
Time 11 Aug. 1952
13.114 C. E. Montague
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1867-1928
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
Disenchantment (1922) ch. 16
13.115 Field-Marshal Montgomery (Viscount Montgomery of Alamein)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1976
Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow."
Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That
is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2
of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China." It is
a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives, and an army fighting
there would be engulfed by what is known as the Ming Bing, the people's
insurgents.
Hansard (Lords) 30 May 1962, col. 227
Far from helping these unnatural practices along, surely our task is to
build a bulwark which will defy evil influences which are seeking to
undermine the very foundations of our national character--defy them; do
not help them. I have heard some say--and, indeed, the noble Earl said so
himself--that such practices are allowed in France and in other NATO
countries. We are not French, and we are not other nationals. We are
British, thank God!
Hansard (Lords) 24 May 1965, col. 648 (2nd reading of Sexual Offences
Bill)
13.116 George Moore
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1852-1933
All reformers are bachelors.
Bending of the Bough (1900) act 1
A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to
find it.
Brook Kerith (1916) ch. 11
Had I not myself written, only half conscious of the truth, that art must
be parochial in the beginning to become cosmopolitan in the end?
Hail and Farewell: Ave (1911) p. 3
The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.
Impressions and Opinions (1891) "Balzac"
Our contention is...that acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it
be an art at all.
Impressions and Opinions (1891) "Mummer-Worship"
13.117 Marianne Moore
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1972
O to be a dragon,
a symbol of the power of Heaven--of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!
O To Be a Dragon (1959) title poem
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this
fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.
Selected Poems (1935) "Poetry"
Nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
it.
Selected Poems (1935) "Poetry"
My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard."
Selected Poems (1935) "Silence"
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn."
Inns are not residences.
Selected Poems (1935) "Silence"
13.118 Larry Morey
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-1971
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho,
It's off to work we go.
Heigh-Ho (1937 song; music by Frank Churchill)
Whistle while you work.
Title of song (1937; music by Frank Churchill)
13.119 Robin Morgan
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1941-
Sisterhood is powerful.
Title of book (1970)
13.120 Christian Morgenstern
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1871-1914
Es war einmal ein Lattenzaun,
mit Zwischenraum, hindurchzuschaun.
Ein Architekt, der dieses sah,
Stand eines Abends pl”tzlich da--
und nahm den Zwischenraum heraus
und baute draus ein grosses Haus.
One time there was a picket fence
With space to gaze from hence to thence.
An architect who saw this sight
Approached it suddenly one night,
Removed the spaces from the fence
And built of them a residence.
Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs, 1905) "Der Lattenzaun"; tr. Max Knight 1963
13.121 Christopher Morley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1957
Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.
Thunder on the Left (1925) ch. 14
13.122 Lord Morley (John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1838-1923
Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect.
Life of Gladstone (1903) vol. 1, p. 194
You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him.
On Compromise (1874) ch. 5
Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
The Human Zoo (1969) p. 8
There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes.
One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception
is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens.
The Naked Ape (1967) p. 9
13.124 Herbert Morrison (Baron Morrison of Lambeth)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1965
Work is the call. Work at war speed. Good-night--and go to it.
Broadcast as Minister of Supply, 22 May 1940, in Daily Herald 23 May 1940
13.125 Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jim Morrison 1943-1971
Ray Manzarek 1935-
Robby Krieger 1946-
John Densmore 1945-
C'mon, baby, light my fire.
Light My Fire (1967 song)
13.126 R. F. Morrison
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Just a wee deoch-an-doris,
Just a wee yin, that's a'.
Just a wee deoch-an-doris,
Before we gang awa'.
There's a wee wifie waitin',
In a wee but-an-ben;
If you can say
"It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht,"
Ye're a' richt, ye ken.
Just a Wee Deoch-an-Doris (1911 song; music by Whit Cunliffe; sung by
Harry Lauder)
The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the
credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less
competition.
Letter to his son, in Harold Nicolson Dwight Morrow (1935) ch. 3
13.128 John Mortimer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1923-
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk
and the yoghurt.
In Observer 28 June 1987
No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and
relatively clean finger nails.
Voyage Round My Father (1971) act 1
13.129 J. B. Morton ('Beachcomber')
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1893-1975
One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool
may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.
By the Way (1931) p. 282
Hush, hush,
Nobody cares!
Christopher Robin
Has
Fallen
Down-
Stairs.
By the Way (1931) p. 367
Mr Justice Cocklecarrot began the hearing of a very curious case
yesterday. A Mrs Tasker is accused of continually ringing the doorbell of
a Mrs Renton, and then, when the door is opened, pushing a dozen
red-bearded dwarfs into the hall and leaving them there.
Diet of Thistles (1938) pt. 7
The Doctor is said also to have invented an extraordinary weapon which
will make war less brutal. It is described as a very powerful liquid which
rots braces at a distance of a mile.
Gallimaufry (1936) "Bracerot"
The man with the false nose had gone to that bourne from which no
hollingsworth returns.
Gallimaufry (1936) "Another True Story"
Dr Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht has patented a new invention.
It is an illuminated trouser-clip for bicyclists who are using main roads
at night.
Morton's Folly (1933) p. 99
After losing five of the last six primaries, President Ford's campaign
manager, Rogers Morton, was asked if he plans any change in strategy. Said
Morton: "I'm not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the
Titanic."
Washington Post 16 May 1976, p. C8
13.131 Sir Oswald Mosley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1980
I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the
left and is now in the centre of politics.
Letter in The Times 26 Apr. 1968
13.132 Lord Louis Mountbatten (Viscount Mountbatten of Burma)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1979
I can't think of a more wonderful thanksgiving for the life I have had
than that everyone should be jolly at my funeral.
In Richard Hough Mountbatten (1980) p. 3
As a military man who has given half a century of active service, I say in
all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars
cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our
perils because of the illusions which they have generated.
Speech at Strasbourg, 11 May 1979, in P. Ziegler Mountbatten (1985) ch. 52
13.133 Lord Moynihan (Berkeley Moynihan, Baron Moynihan)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1936
Lord Dawson of Penn
Has killed lots of men.
So that's why we sing
God save the King.
In Kenneth Rose King George V (1983) ch. 9
13.134 Robert Mugabe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1924-
Cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to
play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.
In Sunday Times 26 Feb. 1984
An orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteous
indignation.
The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge (1966) "Dolce Vita in a Cold Climate"
Once in the lobby of the Midland Hotel in Manchester when I happened to be
in some public disfavour, a man came up to me, grasped my hand and
observed: "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream."
Radio Times 9 July 1964
Good taste and humour...are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.
Time 14 Sept. 1953
The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of
fulfilment.
Tread Softly (1966) p. 46
As has truly been said in his days as an active politician, he [Sir
Anthony Eden] was not only a bore; he bored for England.
Tread Softly (1966) p. 147
And without fear the lawless roads
Ran wrong through all the land.
Journeys and Places (1937) "H”lderlin's Journey"
13.138 Herbert J. Muller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-
Few have heard of Fra Luca Pacioli, the inventor of double-entry
book-keeping; but he has probably had much more influence on human life
than has Dante or Michelangelo.
Uses of the Past (1957) ch. 8
13.139 Ethel Watts Mumford, Oliver Herford, and Addison Mizner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ethel Watts Mumford 1878-1940
Oliver Herford 1863-1935
Addison Mizner 1872-1933
In the midst of life we are in debt.
Altogether New Cynic's Calendar (1907)--a parody of Book of Common
Prayer: see Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 389:12
God gives us our relatives--thank God we can choose our friends.
Cynic's Calendar (1903)
13.140 Lewis Mumford
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-
Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its
grandfathers.
The Brown Decades (1931) p. 3
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Quote Magazine 8 Oct. 1961
13.141 Sir Alfred Munnings
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1959
I find myself a President of a body of men who are what I call
shilly-shallying. They feel that there is something in this so-called
modern art....I myself would rather have--excuse me, my Lord Archbishop--a
damned bad failure, a bad, dusty old picture where somebody has tried to
do something, to set down something that they have seen and felt, than all
this affected juggling, this following of well--shall we call it the
school of Paris?...Anthony Blunt...once stood in this room with me when
the King's pictures were here. And there was a Reynolds hanging there and
he said, "That Reynolds isn't as great as a Picasso." Believe me, what an
extraordinary thing for a man to say.
Speech at Royal Academy, 28 Apr. 1949, in The Finish (1952) ch. 22
13.142 Richard Murdoch, and Kenneth Horne
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Richard Murdoch 1907-1990
Kenneth Horne 1900-1969
Have you read any good books lately?
Catch-phrase used by Richard Murdoch in radio comedy series
Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (started 2 Jan. 1947)
Good morning, sir--was there something?
Catch-phrase used by Sam Costa in radio comedy series
Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (started 2 Jan. 1947), in Norman Hackforth Solo
for Horne (1976) p. 58
13.143 C. W. Murphy and Will Letters
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Has anybody here seen Kelly?
Kelly from the Isle of Man?
Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? (1909 song)
13.144 Ed Murphy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I was project manager at Edwards Airforce Base during Colonel J. P.
Stapp's experimental crash research testing on the track at North Base.
The law's namesake was Captain Ed Murphy--a development engineer from
Wright aircraft lab. Frustration with a strap transducer which was
malfunctioning due to an error by a lab technician in the wiring of the
strain gauge bridges caused Murphy to remark: "If there's any way to do it
wrong, he will!" I assigned Murphy's Law to the statement and the
associated variations.
George E. Nichols in Listener 16 Feb. 1984
13.145 Fred Murray
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ginger, you're balmy!
Title of song (1910)
I'm Henery the Eighth, I am!
Henery the Eighth, I am, I am!
I got married to the widow next door,
She's been married seven times before.
Every one was a Henery,
She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam.
I'm her eighth old man named Henery
I'm Henery the Eighth, I am!
I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am! (1911 song)
13.146 Edward R. Murrow
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1908-1965
As Ed Murrow once said about Vietnam, anyone who isn't confused doesn't
really understand the situation.
Walter Bryan The Improbable Irish (1969) ch. 1
This--is London.
Words used to open his broadcasts from London, 1938-45: see E. R. Murrow
In Search of Light (1967) p. 7
He [Winston Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into
battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon
whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.
Broadcast, 30 Nov. 1954, in In Search of Light (1967) p. 276
Voglio partire in perfetto orario....D'ora innanzi ogni cosa deve
camminare alla perfezione.
We must leave exactly on time....From now on everything must function to
perfection.
Giorgio Pini Mussolini (1939) vol. 2, ch. 6, p. 251 (said to
a station-master). Cf. HRH Infanta Eulalia of Spain Courts and Countries
after the War (1925) ch. 13: "The first benefit of Benito Mussolini's
direction in Italy begins to be felt when one crosses the Italian Frontier
and hears "Il treno arriva all'orario" [i.e. "the train is arriving on
time"]
13.148 A. J. Muste
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1885-1967
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
In New York Times 16 Nov. 1967, p. 46
14.0 N
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14.1 Vladimir Nabokov
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1977
Her exotic daydreams do not prevent her from being small-town bourgeois at
heart, clinging to conventional ideas or committing this or that
conventional violation of the conventional, adultery being a most
conventional way to rise above the conventional.
Lectures on Literature (1980) "Madame Bovary"
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta:
the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap,
at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
Lolita (1955) ch. 1
Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even
greater one.
Pale Fire (1962) p. 225
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our
existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of
darkness.
Speak, Memory (1951) ch. 1
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak
like a child.
Strong Opinions (1973) foreword
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important
to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me.
Strong Opinions (1973) p. 33
14.2 Ralph Nader
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
He [Nansen] once told me the rules by which, in his explorations and at
Geneva, his work was done. There were three of them, and they were very
simple: "Never stop because you are afraid--you are never so likely to be
wrong." "Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention." "The
difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes
a little longer."
Philip Noel-Baker in Listener 14 Dec. 1939
The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary, two;
Or else the other way around,
I'm never sure. Are you?
Bad Parents' Garden of Verse (1936) "The Camel"
The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT
The Face is Familiar (1940) "The Kitten"
Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave
When they think that their children are na‹ve.
The Face is Familiar (1940) "Baby, What Makes the Sky Blue"
Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants;
Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.
You look divine as you advance--
Have you seen yourself retreating?
The Face is Familiar (1940) "What's the Use?"
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk;
Free Wheeling (1931) "The Cow"
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.
Free Wheeling (1931) "The Baby"
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Good Intentions (1942) "You and Me and P. B. Shelley"
Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads,
And not the road.
Good Intentions (1942) "Lather as You Go"
I have a bone to pick with Fate.
Come here and tell me, girlie,
Do you think my mind is maturing late,
Or simply rotted early?
Good Intentions (1942) "Lines on Facing Forty"
I test my bath before I sit,
And I'm always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament.
Good Intentions (1942) "Samson Agonistes"
Women would rather be right than be reasonable.
Good Intentions (1942) "Frailty, Thy Name is a Misnomer"
Parsley
Is gharsley.
Good Intentions (1942) "Further Reflections on Parsley"
God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
Good Intentions (1942) "The Fly"
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But hating, my boy, is an art.
Happy Days (1933) "Plea for Less Malice Toward None"
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
Happy Days (1933) "Song of the Open Road." Cf. Joyce Kilmer 121:8
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
Happy Days (1933) "The Parent"
One would be in less danger
From the wiles of the stranger
If one's own kin and kith
Were more fun to be with.
Hard Lines (1931) "Family Court"
A girl whose cheeks are covered with paint
Has an advantage with me over one whose ain't.
Hard Lines (1931) "Biological Reflection"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
Hard Lines (1931) "Reflections on Ice-breaking"
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
Hard Lines (1931) "Autres B€tes, Autres Moeurs"
Let us pause to consider the English,
Who when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently
thrilled and tinglish,
Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.:
That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there
is.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938) "England Expects"
There was a young belle of old Natchez
Whose garments were always in patchez.
When comment arose
On the state of her clothes,
She drawled, When Ah itchez, Ah scratchez.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938) "Requiem"
Home is heaven and orgies are vile,
But you need an orgy, once in a while.
Primrose Path (1935) "Home, 99 44/100 % Sweet Home"
He tells you when you've got on too much lipstick,
And helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
Versus (1949) "The Perfect Husband"
14.6 George Jean Nathan
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1958
The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens
his mouth.
American Mercury Sept. 1929
14.7 Terry Nation
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Exterminate! Exterminate!
Said by the Daleks in BBC television series Dr Who from Dec. 1963, in
David Whitaker and Terry Nation Dr Who (1964) ch. 9
14.8 James Ball Naylor
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1945
King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many lady friends,
And many, many wives;
But when old age crept over them--
With many, many qualms!--
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.
Vagrant Verse (1935) "King David and King Solomon"
Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is
darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our
beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no
more.
Broadcast, 30 Jan. 1948 (after Gandhi's assassination), in Richard J.
Walsh Nehru on Gandhi (1948) ch. 6
Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.
"Basic Approach," repr. in Vincent Shean Nehru: the Years of Power (1960)
p. 294
Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of a capitalist society,
if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and
thus increase the gap between them.
"Basic Approach," repr. in Vincent Shean Nehru: the Years of Power (1960)
p. 295
14.10 Allan Nevins
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1971
The former Allies had blundered in the past by offering Germany too
little, and offering even that too late, until finally Nazi Germany had
become a menace to all mankind.
In Current History (New York) May 1935, p. 178
14.11 Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Anthony Newley 1931-
Leslie Bricusse 1931-
Stop the world, I want to get off.
Title of musical (1961)
14.12 Huey Newton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1942-
I suggested [in 1966] that we use the panther as our symbol and call our
political vehicle the Black Panther Party. The panther is a fierce animal,
but he will not attack until he is backed into a corner; then he will
strike out.
Revolutionary Suicide (1973) ch. 16
I want to spend, and spend, and spend.
Said to reporters on arriving to collect her husband's football pools
winnings of њ152,000, in Daily Herald 28 Sept. 1961
14.14 Sir Harold Nicolson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1886-1968
Chamberlain (who has the mind and manner of a clothes-brush) aims only at
assuring temporary peace at the price of ultimate defeat.
Diary 6 June 1938, in Diaries and Letters (1966) p. 345
Attlee is a charming and intelligent man, but as a public speaker he is,
compared to Winston [Churchill], like a village fiddler after Paganini.
Diary 10 Nov. 1947, in Diaries and Letters (1968) p. 113
14.15 Reinhold Niebuhr
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1971
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination
to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Children of Light and Children of Darkness (1944) foreword
God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed;
Give us the courage to change what should be changed;
Give us the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
In Richard Wightman Fox Reinhold Niebuhr (1985) ch. 12 (prayer said to
have been first published in 1951)
14.16 Carl Nielsen
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1931
Musik er liv, som dette und slukkelig.
Music is life, and like it is inextinguishable.
4th Symphony ("The Inextinguishable," 1916) preface
14.17 Martin Niem”ller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1984
When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not
concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic,
and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions
and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not
concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church--and there
was nobody left to be concerned.
In Congressional Record 14 Oct. 1968, p. 31636
On December 5 [1907], Sir Douglas Dawson...brought the Order [of
Merit]...to South Street. Miss Nightingale understood that some kindness
had been done to her, but hardly more. "Too kind, too kind," she said.
E. Cook Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) vol. 2, pt. 7, ch. 9
14.19 Richard Milhous Nixon
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1913-
When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
In David Frost I Gave Them a Sword (1978) ch. 8
I brought myself down. I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in. And they
twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I'd been in their position, I'd
have done the same thing.
Television interview with David Frost, 19 May 1977, in David Frost I Gave
Them a Sword (1978) ch. 10
I leave you gentlemen now and you will now write it. You will interpret
it. That's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know--just think
how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around
any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference....I hope
that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, the
press first recognize the great responsibility they have to report all the
news and, second, recognize that they have a right and a responsibility,
if they're against a candidate, to give him the shaft, but also recognize
if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who
will report what the candidate says now and then. Thank you gentlemen, and
good day.
After losing the election for Governor of California, 5 Nov. 1962, in New
York Times 8 Nov. 1962, p. 8
Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth, to see it like it is
and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth and to live
the truth. That's what we will do.
Nomination acceptance speech, Miami, 8 Aug. 1968, in New York Times 9 Aug.
1968, p. 20
Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room
at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic
telephone call ever made.
Speaking to the first men to land on the moon, 20 July 1969, in New York
Times 21 July 1969, p. 2
This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.
Speech 24 July 1969, welcoming the return of the first men to land on the
moon, in New York Times 25 July 1969, p. 29
There can be no whitewash at the White House.
Television speech on Watergate, 30 Apr. 1973, in New York Times 1 May
1973, p. 31
I made my mistakes, but in all my years of public life, I have never
profited, never profited from public service. I've earned every cent. And
in all of my years in public life I have never obstructed justice. And
I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life that
I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether
or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned
everything I've got.
Speech at press conference, 17 Nov. 1973, in New York Times 18 Nov. 1973,
p. 62
This country needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good
carpenters.
Farewell address at White House, 9 Aug. 1974, cited in New York Times
10 Aug. 1974, p. 4
Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we've got is honestly
ours. I should say this--that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does
have a respectable Republican cloth coat. And I always tell her that
she'd look good in anything. One other thing I probably should tell you,
because if I don't they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did
get something--a gift--after the election....It was a little
cocker-spaniel dog....And our little girl--Tricia, the 6-year-old--named
it Checkers. And you know the kids love that dog and I just want to say
this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're going to
keep it.
Speech on television, 23 Sept. 1952, in P. Andrews This Man Nixon (1952)
p. 60
14.20 David Nobbs
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"This one's going to be a real winner," said C. J. "I didn't get where
I am today without knowing a real winner when I see one."
Death of Reginald Perrin (1975) p. 9 (subsequently a catch-phrase in BBC
television series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin , 1976-80)
The villain still pursued her.
Phoenix (1900) act 1, sc. 3
14.22 Albert J. Nock
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1945
It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be
paid for only with goods and services.
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943) ch. 13
14.23 Frank Norman and Lionel Bart
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Frank Norman 1931-
Lionel Bart 1930-
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.
Title of musical (1959). Cf. Ted Persons 170:9
14.24 Lord Northcliffe (Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1922
Harmsworth had always said: "When I want a peerage, I shall buy it like an
honest man."
Tom Driberg Swaff: the Life and Times of Hannen Swaffer (1974) ch. 2
14.25 Jack Norworth
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1959
Oh, shine on, shine on, harvest moon
Up in the sky.
I ain't had no lovin'
Since April, January, June, or July.
Shine On, Harvest Moon (1908 song; music by Nora Bayes-Norworth)
Take me out to the ball game.
Title of song (1908; music by Albert Von Tilzer)
14.26 Alfred Noyes
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1880-1958
Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time,
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
Poems (1904) "The Barrel-Organ"
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems (1907) "The Highwayman"
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems (1907) "The Highwayman"
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems (1907) "The Highwayman"
14.27 Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The late Bill Nye once said, "I have been told that Wagner's music is
better than it sounds."
Mark Twain Autobiography (1924) vol. 1, p. 338
15.0 O
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15.1 Captain Lawrence Oates
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1880-1912
I am just going outside and may be some time.
Last words, quoted in R. F. Scott Diary 16-17 Mar. 1912, in Last
Expedition (1913) p. 593
The vote, I thought, means nothing to women. We should be armed.
In Erica Jong Fear of Flying (1973) ch. 16
Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made
them different.
Girls in their Married Bliss (1964) ch. 10
15.3 Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan or O Nuallain)
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1911-1966
The Pooka MacPhellimey, a member of the devil class, sat in his hut in the
middle of a firwood meditating on the nature of the numerals and
segregating in his mind the odd ones from the even.
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) ch. 1
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being
based upon licensed premises.
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) ch. 1
A pint of plain is your only man.
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) "The Workman's Friend"
It is not that I half knew my mother. I knew half of her: the lower
half--her lap, legs, feet, her hands and wrists as she bent forward.
The Hard Life (1961) p. 11
People who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the
rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the
personalities of their bicycles as a result of the interchanging of the
atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people
in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.
The Third Policeman (1967) p. 85
15.4 Sean O'Casey
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1884-1964
He's an oul' butty o' mine--oh, he's a darlin' man, a daarlin' man.
Juno and the Paycock (1925) act 1
The whole worl's in a state o' chassis!
Juno and the Paycock (1925) act 1
I often looked up at the sky an' assed meself the question--what is the
stars, what is the stars?
Juno and the Paycock (1925) act 1
Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, take our hearts o' stone...an' give
us hearts o' flesh!...Take away this murdherin' hate...an' give us Thine
own eternal love!
Juno and the Paycock (1925) act 2
The Polis as Polis, in this city, is Null an' Void!
Juno and the Paycock (1925) act 3
When one has reached 81...one likes to sit back and let the world turn by
itself, without trying to push it.
New York Times 25 Sept. 1960, pt. 2, p. 3
There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as
great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many
things as possible.
The Plough and the Stars (1926) act 1
It's my rule never to lose me temper till it would be dethrimental to keep
it.
The Plough and the Stars (1926) act 2
English literature's performing flea [P. G. Wodehouse].
In P. G. Wodehouse Performing Flea (1953) p. 217
15.6 Se n O'Faol in
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1900-
Stories, like whiskey, must be allowed to mature in the cask.
Atlantic Monthly Dec. 1956, p. 76
15.7 David Ogilvy
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1911-
The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence
if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade
her to buy anything.
Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) ch. 5
K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy,
You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore;--
When the m-m-m-moon shines,
Over the cow shed,
I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.
K-K-K-Katy (1918 song)
15.9 John O'Hara
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1905-1970
George [Gershwin] died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe that
if I don't want to.
Newsweek 15 July 1940, p. 34
15.10 Patrick O'Keefe
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1872-1934
Say it with flowers.
Slogan for the Society of American Florists, in Florists' Exchange 15 Dec.
1917, p. 1268
15.11 Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr.
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When Irish eyes are smiling.
Title of song (1912; music by Ernest R. Ball)
15.12 Frederick Scott Oliver
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1864-1934
A wise politician will never grudge a genuflexion or a rapture if it is
expected of him by prevalent opinion.
The Endless Adventure (1930) vol. 1, pt. 1, ch. 20
15.13 Laurence Olivier (Baron Olivier of Brighton)
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1907-1989
Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the
occupation of an adult.
In Time 3 July 1978, p. 33
15.14 Frank Ward O'Malley
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1875-1932
See Elbert Hubbard (8.85)
15.15 Mary O'Malley
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1941-
Once a Catholic always a Catholic. That's the rule.
Once a Catholic (1971) act 1, sc. 2. Cf. Angus Wilson
For de little stealin' dey gits you in jail soon or late. For de big
stealin' dey makes you Emperor and puts you in de Hall o' Fame when you
croaks.
The Emperor Jones (1921) sc. 1
The iceman cometh.
Title of play (1946)
Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
Lazarus Laughed (1927) act 2, sc. 1
When men make gods, there is no God!
Lazarus Laughed (1927) act 2, sc. 2
A long day's journey into night.
Title of play (written 1940-1; published 1956)
Life is perhaps most wisely regarded as a bad dream between two
awakenings, and every day is a life in miniature.
Marco Millions (1928) act 2, sc. 2
The sea hates a coward!
Mourning becomes Electra (1931) pt. 2, act 4
What beastly incidents our memories insist on cherishing!...the ugly and
disgusting...the beautiful things we have to keep diaries to remember!
Strange Interlude (1928) pt. 1, act 2
The only living life is in the past and future...the present is an
interlude...strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear
witness we are living.
Strange Interlude (1928) pt. 2, act 8
Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in
the electrical display of God the Father!
Strange Interlude (1928) pt. 2, act 9
15.17 Brian O'Nolan
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1911-1966
See Flann O'Brien (15.3)
15.18 J. Robert Oppenheimer
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1904-1967
In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no
overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and
this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
Lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 25 Nov. 1947, in Open
Mind (1955) ch. 5
We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?--Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel?
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) ch. 12
15.21 David Ormsby Gore
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1918-1985
See Lord Harlech (8.23)
15.22 Jos‚ Ortega y Gasset
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1883-1955
Yo soy yo y mi circumstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo.
I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not
preserve myself.
Meditaciones del Quijote (Meditations of Quixote, 1914) in Obras Completas
(1946) vol. 1, p. 322
La civilizaciўn no es otra cosa que el ensayo de reducir la fuerza
a ultima ratio.
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to
the last resort.
La Rebeliўn de las Masas (The Revolt of the Masses, 1930) in Obras
Completas (1947) vol. 4, p. 191
15.23 Joe Orton
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1933-1967
I'd the upbringing a nun would envy and that's the truth. Until I was
fifteen I was more familiar with Africa than my own body.
Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964) act 1
Kath: Can he be present at the birth of his child?...
Ed: It's all any reasonable child can expect if the dad is present at
the conception.
Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964) act 3
Every luxury was lavished on you--atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision.
I had to make my own way.
Loot (1967) act 1
Policemen, like red squirrels, must be protected.
Loot (1967) act 1
Reading isn't an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to
keep the paper work down to a minimum.
Loot (1967) act 2
The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste
invariably have very bad taste.
Transatlantic Review Spring 1967, p. 95
You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in
a Y-shaped coffin.
What the Butler Saw (1969) act 1
15.24 George Orwell (Eric Blair)
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1903-1950
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.
Animal Farm (1945) ch. 1
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Animal Farm (1945) ch. 3
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Animal Farm (1945) ch. 10
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
Last words in his notebook, 17 April 1949, in Collected Essays (1968)
vol. 4, p. 515
I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's thin man
inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block
of stone?
Coming up For Air (1939) pt. 1, ch. 3. See also Cyril Connolly (3.85)
[Clement] Attlee reminds me of nothing so much as a recently dead fish,
before it has had time to stiffen.
Diary 19 May 1942, in Essays (1968 vol. 2, p. 426
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much
disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure
in thinking that human affairs would never improve.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) ch. 30
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard
pie....A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
Horizon Sept. 1941 "The Art of Donald McGill"
Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that
everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that
change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other.
Inside the Whale (1940) "Charles Dickens"
Keep the aspidistra flying.
Title of novel (1936)
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted passage, nor
is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles
a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in
it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons....A family with the
wrong members in control--that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to
describing England in a phrase.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) pt. 1 "England Your England"
Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but
the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) pt. 1 "England Your England"
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 1, ch. 1
On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous
face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so
contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS
WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 1, ch. 1
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 1, ch. 1
"Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who
controls the present controls the past."
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 1, ch. 3
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
granted, all else follows.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 1, ch. 7
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's
mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 2, ch. 9
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship
in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to
establish the dictatorship.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 3, ch. 3
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human
face--for ever.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) pt. 3, ch. 3
The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent
cannot be both honest and intelligent.
Polemic Jan. 1946 "The Prevention of Literature"
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
Polemic May 1946 "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"
It is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can
remain superior.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 2
A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of
getting what he wants, within reasonable limits. Hence the fact that in
times of stress "educated" people tend to come to the front.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 3
There can hardly be a town in the South of England where you could throw a
brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 7
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is
its adherents.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 11
The typical Socialist is...a prim little man with a white-collar job,
usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with
a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social
position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 11
To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on
Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and
shorter hours and nobody bossing you about.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 11
The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W. H. Auden,
a sort of gutless Kipling.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 11
We of the sinking middle class...may sink without further struggles into
the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will
not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose
but our aitches.
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 13
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the
indefensible.
Shooting an Elephant (1950) "Politics and the English Language"
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap
between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were
instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish
squirting out ink.
Shooting an Elephant (1950) "Politics and the English Language"
Political language--and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to
pure wind.
Shooting an Elephant (1950) "Politics and the English Language"
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
Shooting an Elephant (1950) "Reflections on Gandhi"
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
Tribune 22 Mar. 1946, "In Front of your Nose"
15.25 John Osborne
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1929-
Don't clap too hard--it's a very old building.
The Entertainer (1957) no. 7
Thank God we're normal, normal, normal,
Thank God we're normal,
Yes, this is our finest shower!
The Entertainer (1957) no. 7
But I have a go, lady, don't I? I 'ave a go. I do.
The Entertainer (1957) no. 7
Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.
The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968) act 1
Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just
enthusiaism--that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive!
Look Back in Anger (1956) act 1
His knowledge of life and ordinary human beings is so hazy, he really
deserves some sort of decoration for it--a medal inscribed "For Vaguery in
the Field."
Look Back in Anger (1956) act 1
I don't think one "comes down" from Jimmy's university. According to him,
it's not even red brick, but white tile.
Look Back in Anger (1956) act 2, sc. 1
They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past.
Look Back in Anger (1956) act 2, sc. 1
There aren't any good, brave causes left. If the big bang does come, and
we all get killed off, it won't be in aid of the old-fashioned, grand
design. It'll just be for the Brave New-nothing-very-much-thank-you.
About as pointless and inglorious as stepping in front of a bus.
Look Back in Anger (1956) act 3, sc. 1
This is a letter of hate. It is for you my countrymen, I mean those men
of my country who have defiled it. The men with manic fingers leading the
sightless, feeble, betrayed body of my country to its death....I only hope
it [my hate] will keep me going. I think it will. I think it may sustain
me in the last few months. Till then, damn you England. You're rotting
now, and quite soon you'll disappear. My hate will outrun you yet, if only
for a few seconds. I wish it could be eternal.
Tribune 18 Aug. 1961
15.26 Sir William Osler
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1849-1919
That man can interrogate as well as observe nature, was a lesson slowly
learned in his evolution.
In Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings (1961) p. 62
Failure to examine the throat is a glaring sin of omission, especially in
children. One finger in the throat and one in the rectum makes a good
diagnostician.
In Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings (1961) p. 104
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to
take medicine.
In Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings (1961) p. 105
It is strange how the memory of a man may float to posterity on what he
would have himself regarded as the most trifling of his works.
In Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings (1961) p. 112
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which
distinguishes man from animals.
In H. Cushing Life of Sir William Osler (1925) vol. 1, ch. 14
My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age,
and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in
professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.
Speech at Johns Hopkins University, 22 Feb. 1905, in H. Cushing Life of
Sir William Osler (1925) vol. 1, ch. 24
To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.
In Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1985) epigraph
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
Montreal Medical Journal Sept. 1902, p. 696
The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.
Science and Immortality (1904) ch. 2
15.27 Peter Demianovich Ouspensky
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1878-1947
Truths that become old become decrepit and unreliable; sometimes they may
be kept going artificially for a certain time, but there is no life in
them. This explains why reverting to old ideas, when people become
disappointed in new ideas, does not help much. Ideas can be too old.
A New Model of the Universe (ed. 2, 1934) preface
15.28 David Owen
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1938-
We are fed up with fudging and mudging, with mush and slush. We need
courage, conviction, and hard work.
Speech to his supporters at Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, 2 Oct.
1980, in Guardian 3 Oct. 1980
The price of championing human rights is a little inconsistency at times.
Hansard 30 Mar. 1977, p. 397
I don't care if you criticize us, agree with us or disagree with us. Just
mention us, that is all we ask.
Observer 28 Apr. 1985
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They
may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true
Poets must be truthful.
Poems (1963 ed.) preface
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Anthem for Doomed Youth"
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Dulce et Decorum Est"
Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Futility"
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
Poems (1963 ed.) "Futility"
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Greater Love"
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Poems (1963 ed.) "The Send-Off"
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Strange Meeting"
"Strange friend," I said, "here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said that other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Strange Meeting"
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Poems (1963 ed.) "Strange Meeting"
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for you so frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now...
Poems (1963 ed.) "Strange Meeting"
15.30 Oxford and Asquith, Countess of
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1864-1945
See Margot Asquith (1.61)
15.31 Oxford and Asquith, Earl of
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1852-1928
See Herbert Henry Asquith (1.60)
16.0 P
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16.2 William Tyler Page
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1868-1942
I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people,
by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the
consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of
many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable, established
upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for
which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore
believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its
Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it
against all enemies.
American's Creed (prize-winning competition entry, 3 Apr. 1918) in
Congressional Record vol. 56, pt. 12 (appendix), p. 286
There is no disguise or camouflage about the Prime Minister. He is the
original banana man, yellow outside and a softer yellow inside.
Of Sir Anthony Eden in a House of Commons debate, Hansard 14 Sept. 1956,
col. 432
It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.
Advertising slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners, devised in 1919, in Nigel
Rees Slogans (1982) p. 40
16.5 Revd Ian Paisley
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1926-
I would rather be British than just.
Remark to Bernadette Devlin, Oct. 1969, reported by Sunday Times Insight
Team in Ulster (1972) ch. 3
16.6 Michael Palin
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1943-
See Graham Chapman et al. (3.47)
16.7 Norman Panama and Melvin Frank
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Norman Panama 1914-
Melvin Frank 1913-1988
The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice
from the palace has the brew that is true.
Court Jester (1955 film; words spoken--with difficulty--by Danny Kaye)
I'll take a lemonade!...In a dirty glass!
Road to Utopia (1946 film; words spoken by Bob Hope)
Never lose your temper with the Press or the public is a major rule of
political life.
Unshackled (1959) ch. 5
We are here to claim our right as women, not only to be free, but to fight
for freedom. That it is our right as well as our duty. It is our
privilege, as well as our pride and our joy, to take some part in this
militant movement which, as we believe, means the regeneration of all
humanity.
Speech in London, 23 Mar. 1911, in Votes for Women 31 Mar. 1911
After all, is not a woman's life, is not her health, are not her limbs
more valuable than panes of glass? There is no doubt of that, but most
important of all, does not the breaking of glass produce more effect upon
the Government?
Speech on 16 Feb. 1912, in My Own Story (1914) p. 213
There is something that Governments care far more for than human life, and
that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we
shall strike the enemy....Be militant each in your own way. Those of you
who can express your militancy by going to the House of Commons and
refusing to leave without satisfaction, as we did in the early days--do
so....And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to
rebellion. I say to the Government: You have not dared to take the
leaders of Ulster for their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare.
Speech at Albert Hall, 17 Oct. 1912, in My Own Story (1914) p. 265
16.10 Emmeline Pankhurst, Dame Christabel Pankhurst, and Annie Kenney
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We laid our plans to begin this work at a great meeting to be held in the
Free Trade Hall, Manchester [on 13 Oct. 1905] with Sir Edward Grey as the
principal speaker. We intended to get seats in the gallery, directly
facing the platform and we made for the occasion a large banner with the
words "Will the Liberal Party Give Votes for Women?" ...At the last
moment, however, we had to alter the plan because it was impossible to get
the gallery seats we wanted. There was no way in which we could use our
large banner, so...we cut out and made a small banner with the three-word
inscription "Votes for Women." Thus, quite accidentally, there came into
existence the present slogan of the suffrage movement around the world.
Emmeline Pankhurst My Own Story (1914) ch. 3
16.11 Charlie Parker
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1920-1955
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't
live it, it won't come out of your horn.
In Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955) p. 358
One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
In Howard Teichmann George S. Kaufman (1972) p. 68
You can always tell that the crash is coming when I start getting tender
about Our Dumb Friends. Three highballs and I think I'm St Francis of
Assisi.
Here Lies (1939) "Just a Little One"
And I'll stay off Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.
Here Lies (1939) "The Little Hours"
I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the
roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing.
I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
Here Lies (1939) "The Little Hours"
Sorrow is tranquillity remembered in emotion.
Here Lies (1939) "Sentiment." Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979)
583:10
At intermission [in the 1933 premiere of The Lake], Dorothy Parker turned
to a companion and made her famous quip: "Katharine Hepburn runs the gamut
from A to B."
In G. Carey Katharine Hepburn (1985) ch. 6
The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of
the prettiest love stories in all literature.
Review of Margot Asquith's Lay Sermons in New Yorker 22 Oct. 1927, in A
Month of Saturdays (1970) p. 10
And it is that word "hummy," my darlings, that marks the first place in
"The House at Pooh Corner" at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
New Yorker 20 Oct. 1928 (review by Dorothy Parker as "Constant Reader")
Where's the man could ease a heart like a satin gown?
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "The Satin Dress"
By the time you say you're his,
Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying--
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Unfortunate Coincidence"
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Inventory"
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Comment"
Razors pain you
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "R‚sum‚"
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "One Perfect Rose"
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "News Item"
Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "General Review of the Sex Situation"
Whose love is given over-well
Shall look on Helen's face in hell
Whilst they whose love is thin and wise
Shall see John Knox in Paradise.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Partial Comfort"
Accursed from birth they be
Who seek to find monogamy,
Pursuing it from bed to bed--
I think they would be better dead.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Reuben's Children"
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "A Pig's-Eye View of Literature"
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "The Flaw in Paganism"
He lies below, correct in cypress wood,
And entertains the most exclusive worms.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Tombstones in the Starlight no. 3, Epitaph
for a Very Rich Man"
Scratch a lover, and find a foe.
Not So Deep as a Well (1937) "Ballade of a Great Weariness"
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth
in it; wise-cracking is simply callisthenics with words.
In Paris Review Summer 1956, p. 81
House Beautiful is play lousy.
Review in New Yorker (1933), in Phyllis Hartnoll Plays and Players (1984)
p. 89
Excuse My Dust.
Suggested epitaph for herself (1925), in Alexander Woollcott While Rome
Burns (1934) "Our Mrs Parker"
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.
In Alexander Woollcott While Rome Burns (1934) "Our Mrs Parker"
And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls
attending it were laid end to end, Mrs Parker said, she wouldn't be at all
surprised.
Alexander Woollcott While Rome Burns (1934) "Our Mrs Parker"
"Good work, Mary," our Mrs Parker wired collect [to Mrs Sherwood on the
arrival of her baby]. "We all knew you had it in you."
Alexander Woollcott While Rome Burns (1934) "Our Mrs Parker"
How do they know?
Reaction to the death of President Calvin Coolidge in 1933, in Malcolm
Cowley Writers at Work 1st Series (1958) p. 65
As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush.
Comment on lady novelists in Malcolm Cowley Writers at Work 1st Series
(1958) p. 69
Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and
there you are.
In Malcolm Cowley Writers at Work 1st Series (1958) p. 81
Brevity is the soul of lingerie, as the Petticoat said to the Chemise.
Caption written for Vogue (1916) in John Keats You Might as well Live
(1970) p. 32. Cf. Shakespeare's Hamlet act 2, sc. 2: "Brevity is the soul
of wit"
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
On being challenged to use "horticulture" in a sentence, in John Keats You
Might as well Live (1970) p. 46
It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.
On her abortion, in John Keats You Might as well Live (1970) pt. 2, ch. 3
16.13 Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, and Robert Carson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Dorothy Parker 1893-1967
Alan Campbell 1905-1963
Robert Carson 1910-1983
A star is born.
Title of film (1937)
16.14 Ross Parker and Hugh Charles
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ross Parker 1914-1974
Hugh Charles 1907-
There'll always be an England
While there's a country lane,
Wherever there's a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.
There'll always be an England (1939 song)
We'll meet again, don't know where,
Don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.
We'll Meet Again (1939 song)
16.15 C. Northcote Parkinson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-
Expenditure rises to meet income.
The Law and the Profits (1960) opening sentence
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Parkinson's Law (1958) p. 4
It might be termed the Law of Triviality. Briefly stated, it means that
the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to
the sum involved.
Parkinson's Law (1958) "High Finance"
It is now known, however, that men enter local politics solely as a result
of being unhappily married.
Parkinson's Law (1958) "Pension Point"
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree;
And he sang as he watched and waited till his "Billy" boiled:
"You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me."
Waltzing Matilda (1903 song)
16.17 Alan Paton
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1903-
Cry, the beloved country.
Title of novel (1948)
16.18 Norman Vincent Peale
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-
The power of positive thinking.
Title of book (1952)
16.19 Charles S. Pearce
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Keep that schoolgirl complexion.
Advertising slogan for Palmolive soap, from 1917, in Nigel Rees Slogans
(1982) p. 113
Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned.
A widely-read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason
that he has read too widely.
Common Misquotations (1934) Introduction
There is no stronger craving in the world than that of the rich for
titles, except perhaps that of the titled for riches.
The Pilgrim Daughters (1961) ch. 6
The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for
peace like retarded pygmies.
Speech in Toronto, 14 Mar. 1955
Not only did he [Dean Acheson] not suffer fools gladly, he did not suffer
them at all.
Time 25 Oct. 1971, p. 20
16.22 Charles P‚guy
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1914
Qui ne gueule pas la v‚rit‚, quand il sait la v‚rit‚, se fait le complice
des menteurs et des faussaires.
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the
accomplice of liars and forgers.
Lettre du Provincial 21 Dec. 1899, in Basic Verities (1943) "Honest
People"
La tyrannie est toujours mieux organis‚e que la libert‚.
Tyranny is always better organised than freedom.
In Basic Verities (1943) "War and Peace"
16.23 Vladimir Peniakoff
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1897-1951
That night a message came on the wireless for me. It said: "SPREAD ALARM
AND DESPONDENCY." So the time had come, I thought, Eighth Army was taking
the offensive. The date was, I think, May 18th, 1942.
Private Army (1950) pt. 2, ch. 5
16.24 William H. Penn
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See Albert H. Fitz (6.19)
16.25 S. J. Perelman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1904-1979
Crazy like a fox.
Title of book (1944)
I have Bright's disease and he has mine, sobbed the panting palooka.
Judge 16 Nov. 1929
16.26 S. J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, and Arthur Sheekman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
S. J. Perelman 1904-1979
Will B. Johnstone
Arthur Sheekman
Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?
Monkey Business (1931 film), in The Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business
and Duck Soup (1972) p. 18
Look at me. Worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Monkey Business (1931 film) in, The Four Marx Brothers in Monkey Business
and Duck Soup (1972) p. 54
16.27 Carl Perkins
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1932-
It's one for the money,
Two for the show,
Three to get ready,
Now go, cat, go!
But don't you step on my Blue Suede Shoes.
You can do anything but lay off my Blue Suede Shoes.
Blue Suede Shoes (1956 song)
Why not "Madam Secretary," if that form is to be used at all? One is
accustomed to "madam chairman" ...so it comes more naturally, don't you
think?
When asked how she should be addressed as the first US woman cabinet
member, in New York Times 6 Mar. 1933, p. 14. Cf. Howard Lindsay and
Russel Crouse
16.29 Juan Perўn
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1895-1974
If I had not been born Perўn, I would have liked to be Perўn.
In Observer 21 Feb. 1960
Things ain't what they used to be.
Title of song (1941; music by Mercer Ellington). Cf. Frank Norman and
Lionel Bart
16.31 Henri Philippe P‚tain
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1856-1951
To write one's memoirs is to speak ill of everybody except oneself.
In Observer 26 May 1946
16.32 Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Laurence Peter 1919-
Raymond Hull
My analysis...led me to formulate The Peter Principle: In a Hierarchy
Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.
The Peter Principle (1969) ch. 1
In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent
to carry out its duties....Work is accomplished by those employees who
have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
The Peter Principle (1969) ch. 1
Competence, like truth, beauty and contact lenses, is in the eye of the
beholder.
The Peter Principle (1969) ch. 3
16.33 Kim Philby (Harold Adrian Russell Philby)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1912-1988
To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.
In Sunday Times 17 Dec. 1967, p. 2
16.34 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
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1921-
I don't think doing it [killing animals] for money makes it any more
moral. I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are
doing the same thing.
Speech in London, 6 Dec. 1988, comparing participation in blood sports to
selling slaughtered meat, in The Times 7 Dec. 1988
I never see any home cooking. All I get is fancy stuff.
In Observer 28 Oct. 1962
If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.
Remark to Edinburgh University students in Peking, 16 Oct. 1986, in The
Times 17 Oct. 1986
Just at this moment we are suffering a national defeat comparable to any
lost military campaign, and, what is more, it is self-inflicted. I could
use any one of the several stock phrases or platitudes about this. But
I prefer one I picked up during the war. It is brief and to the point:
Gentlemen, I think it is about time we "pulled our fingers out."...If we
want to be more prosperous we've simply got to get down to it and work for
it. The rest of the world does not owe us a living.
Speech in London, 17 Oct. 1961, in Daily Mail 18 Oct. 1961
We now look upon it [the English-Speaking Union] as including those
countries which use English as an inter-Commonwealth language. I include
"pidgin-English" in this even though I am referred to in that splendid
language as "Fella belong Mrs Queen."
Speech to English-Speaking Union, Ottawa, 29 Oct. 1958, in Prince Philip
Speaks (1960) pt. 2, ch. 3
16.35 Morgan Phillips
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1963
The Labour Party owes more to Methodism than to Marxism.
In James Callaghan Time and Chance (1987) ch. 1
16.36 Stephen Phillips
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1864-1915
Behold me now
A man not old, but mellow, like good wine.
Not over-jealous, yet an eager husband.
Ulysses (1902) act 3, sc. 2
16.37 Eden Phillpotts
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1862-1960
Now old man's talk o' the days behind me;
My darter's youngest darter to mind me;
A little dreamin', a little dyin',
A little lew corner of airth to lie in.
Miniatures (1942) "Gaffer's Song"
16.38 Pablo Picasso
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1973
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
In John Golding Cubism (1959) p. 60
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant,
and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.
Remark to Fran‡oise Gilot in 1944, in Fran‡oise Gilot and Carlton Lake
Life With Picasso (1964) pt. 1
Every positive value has its price in negative terms, and you never see
anything very great which is not, at the same time, horrible in some
respect. The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
Remark to Fran‡oise Gilot in 1946, in Fran‡oise Gilot and Carlton Lake
Life With Picasso (1964) pt. 2
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize
truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.
In Dore Ashton Picasso on Art (1972) "Two statements by Picasso"
Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of
a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one,
without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people
have to understand....People who try to explain pictures are usually
barking up the wrong tree.
In Dore Ashton Picasso on Art (1972) "Two statements by Picasso"
Are yer courtin'?
Catch-phrase in Have a Go! (BBC radio quiz programme, 1946-67)
Give him the money, Barney.
Catch-phrase in Have a Go! (BBC radio quiz programme, 1946-67)
16.40 Harold Pinter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1930-
"But what would you say your plays were about, Mr Pinter?" "The weasel
under the cocktail cabinet."
In J. Russell Taylor Anger and After (1962) p. 231
I said to this monk, here, I said, look here, mister, he opened the door,
big door, he opened it, look here mister, I said, I showed him these, I
said, you haven't got a pair of shoes, have you, a pair of shoes, I said,
enough to help me on my way. Look at these, they're nearly out, I said,
they're no good to me. I heard you got a stock of shoes here. Piss off, he
said to me.
The Caretaker (1960) act 1
I can't drink Guinness from a thick mug. I only like it out of a thin
glass.
The Caretaker (1960) act 1
If only I could get down to Sidcup! I've been waiting for the weather to
break. He's got my papers, this man I left them with, it's got it all down
there, I could prove everything.
The Caretaker (1960) act 1
16.41 Luigi Pirandello
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1867-1936
Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore.
Six characters in search of an author.
Title of play (1921)
Quando i personaggi son vivi, vivi veramente davanti al loro autore,
questo non fa altro che seguirli nelle parole, nei gesti ch'essi appunto
gli propongono.
When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does
nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations
which they suggest to him.
Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in search of an Author,
1921) in Three Plays (1964) p. 64
16.42 Armand J. Piron
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate,
She shivers like the jelly on a plate.
Shimmy like Kate (1919 song)
16.43 Robert Pirosh, George Seaton, and George Oppenheimer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
(Feeling patient's pulse): Either he's dead, or my watch has stopped.
A Day at the Races (1937 film; line spoken by Groucho Marx)
Emily, I've a little confession to make. I really am a horse doctor. But
marry me, and I'll never look at any other horse!
A Day at the Races (1937 film; lines spoken by Groucho Marx)
16.44 Robert M. Pirsig
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
Title of book (1974)
16.45 Walter B. Pitkin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I dream
Already that I hear my lover's voice;
What music shall I have--what dying wails--
The seldom female in a world of males!
On Cats (1947) "Kitten's Eclogue"
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Ariel (1965) "Morning Song"
Dying,
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Encounter Oct. 1963, "Lady Lazarus"
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
Encounter Oct. 1963, "Daddy"
16.48 William Plomer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1903-1973
They took the hill (Whose hill? What for?)
But what a climb they left to do!
Out of that bungled, unwise war
An alp of unforgiveness grew.
Collected Poems (1960) "The Boer War"
On a sofa upholstered in panther skin
Mona did researches in original sin.
Collected Poems (1960) "Mews Flat Mona"
A rose-red sissy half as old as time.
The Dorking Thigh (1945) "Playboy of the Demi-World." Cf. Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 108:4
A family portrait not too stale to record
Of a pleasant old buffer, nephew to a lord,
Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword,
And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad:
Just like an old liberal
Between the wars.
The Dorking Thigh (1945) "Father and Son"
Fissures appeared in football fields
And houses in the night collapsed.
The Thames flowed backward to its source,
The last trickle seen to disappear
Swiftly, like an adder to its hole,
And here and there along the river-bed
The stranded fish gaped among empty tins,
Face downward lay the huddled suicides
Like litter that a riot leaves.
Visiting the Caves (1936) "The Silent Sunday"
16.49 Henri Poincar‚
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1854-1912
Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an
accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is
a house.
Science and Hypothesis (1905) ch. 9
16.50 Georges Pompidou
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1911-1974
A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the
nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.
In Observer 30 Dec. 1973
16.51 Arthur Ponsonby (first Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1871-1946
When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.
Kommt der Krieg ins Land
Gibt LЃgen wie Sand.
[When war enters a country
It produces lies like sand.]
Epigraphs to Falsehood in Wartime (1928) p. 11
16.52 Sir Karl Popper
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-
We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its
prophets.
The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) Introduction
There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds
of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political
power. This is elevated into the history of the world.
The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) vol. 2, ch. 25
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other
reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) vol. 2, ch. 21
Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding
the ends as beyond the province of technology.
Poverty of Historicism (1957) pt. 3, sect. 21
For this, indeed, is the true source of our ignorance--the fact that our
knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be
infinite.
Lecture to British Academy, 20 Jan. 1960, in Proceedings of the British
Academy (1960) vol. 46, p. 69
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
Now, heaven knows,
Anything goes.
Anything Goes (1934 song)
When they begin the Beguine
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendour,
It brings back a memory ever green.
Begin the Beguine (1935 song)
Oh, give me land, lots of land
Under starry skies above
DON'T FENCE ME IN.
Don't Fence Me In (1934 song; revived in 1944 film Hollywood Canteen)
I get no kick from champagne,
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?
I Get a Kick Out of You (1934 song)
I've got you under my skin.
Title of song (1936)
So goodbye dear, and Amen,
Here's hoping we meet now and then,
It was great fun,
But it was just one of those things.
Just One of Those Things (1935 song)
Birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it.
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
Let's Do It (1954 song; these words are not in the original 1928 version)
Miss Otis regrets (she's unable to lunch today).
Title of song (1934)
My heart belongs to Daddy.
Title of song (1938)
Night and day, you are the one,
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.
Night and Day (1932 song)
she: Have you heard it's in the stars,
Next July we collide with Mars?
he: Well, did you evah! What a swell party this is.
Well, Did You Evah? (1956 song)
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Title of song (1956)
You're the top.
Title of song (1934)
16.54 Beatrix Potter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1943
In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered
lappets--when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of
paduasoy and taffeta--there lived a tailor in Gloucester.
Tailor of Gloucester (1903) p. 9
The tailor replied--"Simpkin, we shall make our fortune, but I am worn to
a ravelling. Take this groat (which is our last fourpence) and...with the
last penny of our fourpence buy me one penn'orth of cherry-coloured silk.
But do not lose the last penny of the fourpence, Simpkin, or I am undone
and worn to a thread-paper, for I have NO MORE TWIST."
Tailor of Gloucester (1903) p. 22
It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is "soporific."
Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909) p. 9
Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names
were--Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.
Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) p. 9
You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr
McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie
by Mrs McGregor.
Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) p. 10
Peter sat down to rest; he was out of breath and trembling with
fright....After a time he began to wander about, going
lippity-lippity--not very fast, and looking all round.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) p. 58
16.55 Gillie Potter (Hugh William Peel)
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1887-1975
Good evening, England. This is Gillie Potter speaking to you in English.
Heard at Hogsnorton (opening words of broadcasts, 6 June 1946 and 11 Nov.
1947)
16.56 Stephen Potter
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1900-1969
A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste,
and vice versa.
One-Upmanship (1952) ch. 14
How to be one up--how to make the other man feel that something has gone
wrong, however slightly.
Some Notes on Lifemanship (1950) p. 14
"Yes, but not in the South," with slight adjustments, will do for any
argument about any place, if not about any person.
Some Notes on Lifemanship (1950) p. 43
The theory and practice of gamesmanship or The art of winning games
without actually cheating.
Title of book (1947)
The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to
atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to
atrophy when it gets too far from music.
ABC of Reading (1934) "Warning"
Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends
on what is there to meet it.
ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 1
One of the pleasures of middle age is to find out that one WAS right, and
that one was much righter than one knew at say 17 or 23.
ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 1
Literature is news that STAYS news.
ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 2
Real education must ultimately be limited to one who insists on knowing,
the rest is mere sheep-herding.
ABC of Reading (1934) ch. 8
Tching prayed on the mountain and
wrote make it new
on his bath tub.
Day by day make it new
cut underbrush,
pile the logs
keep it growing.
Cantos (1954) no. 53
Hang it all, Robert Browning,
There can be but the one "Sordello."
Draft of XXX Cantos (1930) no. 2
And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
I mean for things they didn't know.
Draft of XXX Cantos (1930) no. 13
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost
possible degree.
How To Read (1931) pt. 2
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--
No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, E. P. Ode pour l'‚lection de son s‚pulcre (1920)
pt. 1
His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sundials.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, E. P. Ode pour l'‚lection de son s‚pulcre (1920)
pt. 1
The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;
Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, E. P. Ode pour l'‚lection de son s‚pulcre (1920)
pt. 1
Christ follows Dionysus
Phallic and ambrosial
Made way for macerations;
Caliban casts out Ariel.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, E. P. Ode pour l'‚lection de son s‚pulcre (1920)
pt. 1
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, E. P. Ode pour l'‚lection de son s‚pulcre (1920)
pt. 1
The tip's a good one, as for literature
It gives no man a sinecure.
And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece.
And give up verse, my boy,
There's nothing in it.
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, E. P. Ode pour l'‚lection de son s‚pulcre (1920)
pt. 1
Poetry must be as well written as prose.
Letter to Harriet Monroe, Jan. 1915, in D. D. Paige Letters of Ezra Pound
(1950) p. 48
Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will
never learn to trust their great artists.
Literary Essays (1954) "Henry James"
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Lustra (1917) "Ancient Music." Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(1979) 7:18
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Lustra (1916) "In a Station of the Metro"
Bah! I have sung women in three cities,
But it is all the same;
And I will sing of the sun.
Personae (1908) "Cino"
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.
Pisan Cantos (1948) no. 81
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst'ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity.
Pisan Cantos (1948) no. 81
16.58 Anthony Powell
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1905-
He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which
he has always remained faithful.
Acceptance World (1955) ch. 1
Self-love seems so often unrequited.
Acceptance World (1955) ch. 1
Dinner at the Huntercombes' possessed "only two dramatic features--the
wine was a farce and the food a tragedy."
Acceptance World (1955) ch. 4
Books do furnish a room.
Title of novel (1971)
Parents--especially step-parents--are sometimes a bit of a disappointment
to their children. They don't fufil the promise of their early years.
A Buyer's Market (1952) ch. 2
A dance to the music of time.
Title of a novel sequence (1951-75), after title given by Giovanni Pietro
Bellori to a painting by Nicolas Poussin, Le 4 stagioni che ballano al
suono del tempo
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't
committed.
Temporary Kings (1973) ch. 1
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy
juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of
human affairs.
Joseph Chamberlain (1977) epilogue
History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.
Speech to Conservative Party Conference, 19 Oct. 1967, in The Times
20 Oct. 1967
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to
see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."
Speech at Annual Meeting of West Midlands Area Conservative Political
Centre, Birmingham, 20 Apr. 1968, in Observer 21 Apr. 1968
Can you hear me, mother?
Catch-phrase: see Can You Hear Me, Mother? Sandy Powell's Lifetime of
Music-Hall (1975) p. 62
16.61 Vince Powell and Harry Driver
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Never mind the quality, feel the width.
Title of ITV comedy series, 1967-9
16.62 Jacques Pr‚vert
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1900-1977
C'est tellement simple, l' amour.
Love is so simple.
Les Enfants du Paradis (1945 film)
Notre PЉre qui €tes aux cieux
Restez-y
Et nous nous resterons sur la terre
Qui est quelquefois si jolie.
Our Father which art in heaven
Stay there
And we will stay on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty.
Paroles (revised ed., 1949) "Pater Noster"
16.63 J. B. Priestley
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1894-1984
To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings
kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet
is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC
offered you Conflict and Art.
Good Companions (1929) bk. 1, ch. 1
An inspector calls.
Title of play (1947)
This little steamer, like all her brave and battered sisters, is immortal.
She'll go sailing proudly down the years in the epic of Dunkirk. And our
great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching
glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the
little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.
Radio broadcast, 5 June 1940, in Listener 13 June 1940
God can stand being told by Professor Ayer and Marghanita Laski that He
doesn't exist.
In Listener 1 July 1965, p. 12
It is hard to tell where the MCC ends and the Church of England begins.
In New Statesman 20 July 1962, p. 78
16.64 V. S. Pritchett
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1900-
The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all
the great best-sellers.
The Living Novel (1946) "Clarissa"
What Chekhov saw in our failure to communicate was something positive and
precious: the private silence in which we live, and which enables us to
endure our own solitude. We live, as his characters do, beyond any tale
we happen to enact.
Myth Makers (1979) "Chekhov, a doctor"
The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism,
the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with
the life it pretends to build on.
New Statesman 16 June 1951, "Books in General"
In search of lost time.
Title of novel (1913-27), translated by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff and S.
Hudson, 1922-31, as "Remembrance of things past"
Longtemps, je me suis couch‚ de bonne heure.
For a long time I used to go to bed early.
Du c“t‚ de chez Swann (Swann's Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 1)
Je portai … mes lЉvres une cuiller‚e du th‚ o— j'avais laiss‚ s'amollir un
morceau de madeleine....Et tout d'un coup le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce
go–t c'‚tait celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin …
Combray...ma tante L‚onie m'offrait aprЉs l'avoir tremp‚ dans son infusion
de th‚ ou de tilleul.
I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel
of cake....And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the
little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray...my aunt
L‚onie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of
lime-flower tea.
Du c“t‚ de chez Swann (Swann's Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, pp. 46 and 61)
Et il ne fut plus question de Swann chez les Verdurin.
After which there was no more talk of Swann at the Verdurins'.
Du c“t‚ de chez Swann (Swann's Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 99)
Dire que j'ai gѓch‚ des ann‚es de ma vie, que j'ai voulu mourir, que j'ai
eu mon plus grand amour, pour une femme qui ne me plaisait pas, qui
n'‚tait pas mon genre!
To think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed for
death, that the greatest love that I have ever known has been for a woman
who did not please me, who was not in my style!
Du c“t‚ de chez Swann (Swann's Way, 1913, translated 1922 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 228)
On devient moral dЉs qu'on est malheureux.
As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral.
A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove, 1918,
translated 1924 by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 290)
Tout ce que nous connaissons de grand nous vient des nerveux. Ce sont eux
et non pas d'autres qui ont fond‚ les religions et compos‚ les
chefs-d'”uvre. Jamais le monde ne saura tout ce qu'il leur doit et surtout
ce qu'eux ont souffert pour le lui donner.
All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is
they and they only who have founded religions and created great works of
art. Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor
above all of what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.
Le c“t‚ de Guermantes (Guermantes Way, 1921, translated 1925 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 418)
Il n'y a rien comme le d‚sir pour emp€cher les choses qu'on dit d'avoir
aucune ressemblance avec ce qu'on a dans la pens‚e.
There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from
bearing any resemblance to what one has in mind.
Le c“t‚ de Guermantes (Guermantes Way, 1921, translated 1925 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 60)
Un artiste n'a pas besoin d'exprimer directement sa pens‚e dans son
ouvrage pour que celui-ci en reflЉte la qualit‚; on a m€me pu dire que la
louange la plus haute de Dieu est dans la n‚gation de l'ath‚e qui trouve
la Cr‚ation assez parfaite pour se passer d'un cr‚ateur.
An artist has no need to express his mind directly in his work for it to
express the quality of that mind; it has indeed been said that the highest
praise of God consists in the denial of Him by the atheist, who finds
creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.
Le c“t‚ de Guermantes (Guermantes Way, 1921, translated 1925 by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 2, p. 147)
Du reste, continua Mme de Cambremer, j'ai horreur des couchers de soleil,
c'est romantique, c'est op‚ra.
"Anyhow," Mme de Cambremer went on, "I have a horror of sunsets, they're
so romantic, so operatic."
Sodome et Gomorrhe (Cities of the Plain, 1922, translated by C. K.
Scott-Moncrieff, vol. 1, p. 296)
Une de ces d‚p€ches dont M. de Guermantes avait spirituellement fix‚ le
modЉle: "Impossible venir, mensonge suit."
One of those telegrams of which the model had been wittily invented by M.
de Guermantes: "Impossible to come, lie follows."
Le temps retrouv‚ (Time Regained, 1926, translated 1931 by S. Hudson,
ch. 1, p. 7). Cf. Lord Charles Beresford
Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus.
The true paradises are paradises we have lost.
Le temps retrouv‚ (Time Regained, 1926, translated 1931 by S. Hudson,
ch. 3, p. 215)
Le bonheur seul est salutaire pour le corps, mais c'est le chagrin qui
d‚veloppe les forces de l'esprit.
Happiness is salutary for the body but sorrow develops the powers of the
spirit.
Le temps retrouv‚ (Time Regained, 1926, translated 1931 by S. Hudson,
ch. 3, p. 259)
She [Charlotte] drew in her breath sharply as if he had touched a nerve.
"O Jerry," she said when she could trust her voice. "Don't let's ask for
the moon! We have the stars!"
THE END
Now, Voyager (1941) ch. 29 (words spoken by Bette Davis in the 1942 film
version)
16.67 John Pudney
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1909-1977
Do not despair
For Johnny-head-in-air;
He sleeps as sound
As Johnny underground.
Fetch out no shroud
For Johnny-in-the-cloud;
And keep your tears
For him in after years.
Better by far
For Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head,
And see his children fed.
Dispersal Point (1942) "For Johnny"
16.68 Mario Puzo
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1920-
He's a businessman....I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
The Godfather (1969) ch. 1
A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
The Godfather (1969) ch. 1
Mario had called George Mandel to say he'd heard Joe [Heller] was
paralysed. "No, Mario....He's got something called Guillain-Barr‚." "My
God," Mario blurted out. "That's terrible!" A surprised George murmured,
"Hey Mario, you know about Guillain-Barr‚?" "No, I never heard nothing
about it," Mario replied. "But when they name any disease after two guys,
it's got to be terrible!"
Joseph Heller No Laughing Matter (1986) p. 44
Poetry...is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be
interior and personal--which the reader recognizes as his own.
Speech in New York, 13 May 1960, in New York Times 14 May 1960, p. 47
17.3 Peter Quennell
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1905-
He [Andr‚ Gide] was very bald...with...the general look of an elderly
fallen angel travelling incognito.
The Sign of the Fish (1960) ch. 2
17.4 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (often used the pseudonym 'Q')
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1863-1944
Literature is not an abstract science, to which exact definitions can be
applied. It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal
persuasiveness, on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive.
Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge University, 1913, in On the Art of Writing
(1916) p. 16
The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so.
Oxford Book of English Verse (1900) preface
Know you her secret none can utter?
Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?
Poems (1929) "Alma Mater"
He that loves but half of Earth
Loves but half enough for me.
Poems and Ballads (1896) "The Comrade"
Not as we wanted it,
But as God granted it.
Poems and Ballads (1896) "To Bearers"
18.0 R
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18.1 James Rado and Gerome Ragni
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
James Rado 1939-
Gerome Ragni 1942-
When the moon is in the seventh house,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars;
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius,
The age of Aquarius.
Aquarius (1967 song; music by Galt MacDermot)
18.2 John Rae
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1931-
War is, after all, the universal perversion. We are all tainted: if we
cannot experience our perversion at first hand we spend our time reading
war stories, the pornography of war; or seeing war films, the blue films
of war; or titillating our senses with the imagination of great deeds, the
masturbation of war.
The Custard Boys (1960) ch. 13
The second law, Rakove's law of principle and politics, states that the
citizen is influenced by principle in direct proportion to his distance
from the political situation.
In Virginia Quarterly Review (1965) vol. 41, p. 349
18.4 Sir Walter Raleigh
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1861-1922
In Examinations those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who
cannot tell.
Laughter from a Cloud (1923) "Some Thoughts on Examinations"
We could not lead a pleasant life,
And 'twould be finished soon,
If peas were eaten with the knife,
And gravy with the spoon.
Eat slowly: only men in rags
And gluttons old in sin
Mistake themselves for carpet bags
And tumble victuals in.
Laughter from a Cloud (1923) "Stans Puer ad Mensam"
I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!
Laughter from a Cloud (1923) "Wishes of an Elderly Man"
An anthology is like all the plums and orange peel picked out of a cake.
Letter to Mrs Robert Bridges, 15 Jan. 1915, in Letters of Sir Walter
Raleigh (1926) vol. 2, p. 411
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had
ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number (7.13.19) seemed
to me rather a dull one. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting
number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two
different ways."
G. H. Hardy in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 26 May 1921,
p. 57. (The two ways are 1 cubed +12 cubed and 9 cubed +10 cubed)
18.6 John Crowe Ransom
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1888-1974
Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree.
Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills,
The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three,
And of medicos marvelling sweetly on her ills.
Chills and Fever (1924) "Here Lies a Lady"
18.7 Arthur Ransome
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1884-1967
Mother smiled, and read the telegram aloud: Better drowned than duffers if
not duffers wont drown. "Does that mean Yes?" asked Roger. "I think so."
Swallows and Amazons (1930) ch. 1
He glanced with disdain at the big centre table where the famous faces of
the Cambridge theatre were eating a loud meal. "So this is the city of
dreaming spires," Sheila said. "Theoretically speaking that's Oxford,"
Adam said. "This is the city of perspiring dreams."
Glittering Prizes: (1976) ch. 3. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(1979) 15:4
The headmaster said you ruled them with a rod of iron. He called you the
Himmler of the lower fifth.
The Browning Version (1948) (spoken by Peter Gilbert to Andrew
Crocker-Harris)
Let us invent a character, a nice respectable, middle-class, middle-aged,
maiden lady, with time on her hands and the money to help her pass it. She
enjoys pictures, books, music, and the theatre and though to none of these
arts (or rather, for consistency's sake, to none of these three arts and
the one craft) does she bring much knowledge or discernment, at least, as
she is apt to tell her cronies, she "does know what she likes." Let us
call her Aunt Edna....Aunt Edna is universal, and to those who may feel
that all the problems of the modern theatre might be solved by her
liquidation, let me add that I have no doubt at all that she is also
immortal.
Collected Plays (1953) vol. 2, preface
Kenneth: If you're so hot, you'd better tell me how to say she has
ideas above her station.
Brian: Oh, yes, I forgot. It's fairly easy, old boy. Elle a des id‚es
au-dessus de sa gare.
Kenneth: You can't do it like that. You can't say au-dessus de sa gare.
It isn't that sort of station.
French without Tears (1937) act 1
Do you know what "le vice Anglais"--the English vice--really is? Not
flagellation, not pederasty--whatever the French believe it to be. It's
our refusal to admit our emotions. We think they demean us, I suppose.
In Praise of Love (1973) act 2
You can be in the Horseguards and still be common, dear.
Separate Tables (1954) "Table Number Seven" sc. 1
I have defined Ladies as people who did not do things themselves. Aunt
Etty was most emphatically such a person.
Period Piece (1952) ch. 7
18.11 Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank
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The long hot summer.
Title of film (1958), based on stories by William Faulkner
18.12 Ted Ray (Charles Olden)
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1906-1977
Ee, it was agony, Ivy.
Catch-phrase in Ray's a Laugh (BBC radio programme, 1949-61)
He's loo-vely, Mrs Hoskin...he's loo...ooo...vely!
Catch-phrase in Ray's a Laugh (BBC radio programme, 1949-61) in Raising
the Laughs (1952) p. 158
18.13 Sam Rayburn
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1882-1961
If you want to get along, go along.
In Neil MacNeil Forge of Democracy (1963) ch. 6
18.14 Sir Herbert Read
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1893-1968
Do not judge this movement kindly. It is not just another amusing stunt.
It is defiant--the desperate act of men too profoundly convinced of the
rottenness of our civilization to want to save a shred of its
respectability.
Introduction to International Surrealist Exhibition Catalogue, New
Burlington Galleries, London, 11 June--4 July 1936
I saw him stab
And stab again
A well-killed Boche.
This is the happy warrior,
This is he....
Naked Warriors (1919) "The Scene of War, 4. The Happy Warrior"
A woman is like a teabag--only in hot water do you realise how strong she
is.
In Observer 29 Mar. 1981
18.16 Ronald Reagan
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1911-
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating
jellybeans.
In New York Times 15 Jan. 1981
So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to
beware the temptation of pride--the temptation blithely to declare
yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore
the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to
simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove
yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.
Speech to National Association of Evangelicals, 8 Mar. 1983, in New York
Times 9 Mar. 1983
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation
which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
Said during radio microphone test, 11 Aug. 1984, in New York Times 13 Aug.
1984
We are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states
run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes and squalid
criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.
Speech following the hi-jack of a US plane, 8 July 1985, in New York Times
9 July 1985
We know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world
revolution, Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which is targeted on many of
his own Arab compatriots and where we figure in that I don't know.
Said of Col. Gadaffi of Libya at press conference, 9 Apr. 1986, in New
York Times 10 Apr. 1986, p. A 22
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to
realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
At a conference in Los Angeles, 2 Mar. 1977, in Bill Adler Reagan Wit
(1981) ch. 5
Lady of Spain, I adore you.
Right from the night I first saw you,
My heart has been yearning for you,
What else could any heart do?
Lady of Spain (1931 song; music by Tolchard Evans)
18.18 Henry Reed
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1914-1986
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbour gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.
A Map of Verona (1946) "Lessons of the War: 1, Naming of Parts"
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.
A Map of Verona (1946) "Lessons of the War: 1, Naming of Parts"
And the various holds and rolls and throws and breakfalls
Somehow or other I always seemed to put
In the wrong place. And as for war, my wars
Were global from the start.
A Map of Verona (1946) "Lessons of the War: 3, Unarmed Combat"
As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.
A Map of Verona (1946) "Chard Whitlow (Mr Eliot's Sunday Evening
Postscript)"
It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Can extinguish hell.
A Map of Verona (1946) "Chard Whitlow (Mr Eliot's Sunday Evening
Postscript)"
And the sooner the tea's out of the way, the sooner we can get out the
gin, eh?
Private Life of Hilda Tablet (1954 radio play) in Hilda Tablet and
Others: four pieces for radio (1971) p. 60
Duchess: Of course we've all dreamed of reviving the castrati; but it's
needed Hilda to take the first practical steps towards making them
a reality.
Reeves: P-practical steps?
Duchess: Yes, thank God. She's drawn up a list of well-known singers
who she thinks would benefit from...treatment. Some of them have been
singing baritone, or even bass, for years. It's only a question of getting
them to agree.
Private Life of Hilda Tablet (1954 radio play) in Hilda Tablet and
Others: four pieces for radio (1971) p. 72
18.19 John Reed
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1920
Ten days that shook the world.
Title of book (1919)
18.20 Max Reger
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1916
Ich sitze in dem kleinsten Zimmer in meinem Hause. Ich habe Ihre Kritik
vor mir. Im n„chsten Augenblick wird sie hinter mir sein.
I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before
me. In a moment it will be behind me.
Letter to Munich critic Rudolph Louis in response to his review in
MЃnchener Neueste Nachrichten, 7 Feb. 1906, in Nicolas Slonimsky Lexicon
of Musical Invective (1953) p. 139
18.21 Charles A. Reich
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
The greening of America.
Title of book (1970)
18.22 Keith Reid and Gary Brooker
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A whiter shade of pale.
Title of song (1967) (performed by Procol Harum)
18.23 Erich Maria Remarque
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1970
All quiet on the western front.
Title of translation of his novel Im Westen nichts Neues (Nothing New in
the West, 1929). Cf. the title of a poem by Ethel L. Beers: All Quiet
along the Potomac (1861)
18.24 Dr Montague John Rendall
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1862-1950
Nation shall speak peace unto nation.
Motto of the BBC, adapted from Micah 4:3 "Nation shall not lift up sword
against nation"
18.25 James Reston
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-
This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and
will not always conform to our whim.
In New York Times 16 Dec. 1964, p. 42
All politics, however, are based on the indifference of the majority.
In New York Times 12 June 1968, p. 46
18.26 David Reuben
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1933-
Everything you always wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask.
Title of book (1969)
18.27 Charles Revson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-1975
In the factory we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope.
In A. Tobias Fire and Ice (1976) ch. 8
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same;
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
Little Boxes (1962 song)
Ask any man what nationality he would prefer to be, and ninety-nine out of
a hundred will tell you that they would prefer to be Englishmen.
In Gordon Le Sueur Cecil Rhodes (1913) p. 40
Rhodes chose this time [in December 1896] to awaken his friend Albert Grey
from his sleep one night in Bulawayo to ask him whether he had ever
considered how fortunate he was to be alive and in good health and to have
been born an Englishman, when so many millions of other human beings had
no such luck.
J. G. Lockhart and C. M. Woodhouse Rhodes (1963) p. 29
So little done, so much to do.
Said to Lewis Michell on the day he died, in Lewis Michell Life of Rhodes
(1910) vol. 2, ch. 39
18.31 Jean Rhys (Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
?1890-1979
The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing
still. Like when they say "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be, world without end."
Voyage in the Dark (1934) ch. 4, pt. 1
All wars are planned by old men
In council rooms apart.
The Final Answer (1955) "The Two Sides of War"
Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In
dramatic lore they were known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and
Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller,
Crowley, and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone
before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the
precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators
peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green below.
Report of football match on 18 Oct. 1924 between US Military Academy at
West Point NY and University of Notre Dame, in New York Tribune 19 Oct.
1924
For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes--not that you won or lost--but how you played the Game.
Only the Brave (1941) "Alumnus Football"
18.33 Tim Rice
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1944-
Don't cry for me Argentina.
Title of song (1976; music by Andrew Lloyd Webber)
Prove to me that you're no fool
Walk across my swimming pool.
Herod's Song (1970; music by Andrew Lloyd Webber)
Mr Burge: Do you know Lord Astor has made a statement to the police
saying that these allegations of yours are absolutely untrue?
Mandy Rice-Davies: He would, wouldn't he? (Laughter).
At the trial of Stephen Ward, 29 June 1963, in Guardian 1 July 1963
An American tourist, seeing me the centre of a crowd, came up to me.
"Hello, my dear, may I have your autograph. And would you mind telling me
who you are?" I hated having to say my name. For years Mandy Rice-Davies
was such an embarrassment to me. It is only in recent times I have been
able to say my name without a quiver of discomfort. "Call me Lady
Hamilton," I said.
Mandy (1980) ch. 16
My Goodness, My Guinness.
Advertising slogan (1935) in B. Sibley Book of Guinness Advertising (1985)
p. 83
18.36 Frank Richards (Charles Hamilton)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1876-1961
My postal-order hasn't come yet.
Magnet (1908) vol. 1, no. 2 "The Taming of Harry"
Hazeldene looked from one to the other--from the well-set-up, athletic
Lancashire lad, to the fat greedy owl of the Remove, and burst into
a laugh.
Magnet (1909) vol. 3, no. 72 "The Greyfriars Photographer"
"I--I say, you fellows--"
"Shut up, Bunter."
"But--but I say--"
"Keep that cush over his chivvy."
"I--I say--groo--groo--yarooh!"
And Bunter's remarks again tailed off under the cushion.
Magnet (1909) vol. 3, no. 85 "The Greyfriars Visitors"
18.37 I. A. Richards
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1979
It is very probable that the Hindenburg Line to which the defence of our
traditions retired as a result of the onslaughts of the last century will
be blown up in the near future. If this should happen a mental chaos such
as man has never experienced may be expected. We shall then be thrown
back...upon poetry. It is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible
means of overcoming chaos.
Science and Poetry (1926) ch. 7
18.38 Sir Ralph Richardson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1983
"Acting," Ralph Richardson of the Old Vic pronounced last week, "is merely
the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing."
New York Herald Tribune 19 May 1946, pt. 5, p. 1
18.39 Hans Richter
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1843-1916
Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always, by
God, Never.
In Hansard 13 Feb. 1958, col. 574
18.40 Rainer Maria Rilke
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1926
Kunst-Werke sind von einer unendlichen Einsamkeit und mit nichts so wenig
erreichbar als mit Kritik. Nur Liebe kann sie erfassen und halten und kann
gerecht sein gegen sie.
Works of art are of an infinite solitariness, and nothing is less likely
to bring us near to them than criticism. Only love can apprehend and hold
them, and can be just towards them.
Briefe an einem jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet, 1929, translated
by Reginald Snell, 1945) 23 Apr. 1903
Und diese menschlichere Liebe (die unendlich rЃcksichtsvoll und leise, und
gut und klar in Binden und L”sen sich vollziehen wird) wird jener „hneln,
die wir ringend und mЃhsam vorbereiten, der Liebe, die darin besteht, dass
zwei Einsamkeiten einander schЃtzen, grenzen und grЃssen.
And this more human love (which will consummate itself infinitely
thoughtfully and gently, and well and clearly in binding and loosing) will
be something like that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the
love which consists in the mutual guarding, bordering and saluting of two
solitudes.
Briefe an einem jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet, 1929, translated
by Reginald Snell, 1945) 14 May 1904
Wer hat uns also umgedreht, dass wir,
was wir auch tun, in jener Haltung sind
von einem, welcher fortgeht? Wie er auf
den letzten HЃgel, der ihm ganz sein Tal
noch einmal zeigt, sich wendet, anh„lt, weilt--,
so leben wir und nehmen immer Abschied.
Who's turned us around like this, so that we always,
do what we may, retain the attitude
of someone who's departing? Just as he,
on the last hill, that shows him all his valley
for the last time, will turn and stop and linger,
we live our lives, for ever taking leave.
Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies, translated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen
Spender, 1948) no. 8
Ich fЃr die h”chste Aufgabe einer Verbindung zweier Menschen diese halte:
dass einer dem andern seine Einsamkeit bewache.
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that
each protects the solitude of the other.
Letter to Paula Modersohn-Becker, 12 Feb. 1902, in Gesammelte Briefe
(Collected Letters, 1904) vol. 1, p. 204
18.41 Hal Riney
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1932-
It's morning again in America.
Slogan for Ronald Reagan's election campaign, 1984, in Newsweek 6 Aug.
1984
18.42 Robert L. Ripley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1949
Believe it or not.
Title of syndicated newspaper feature (from 1918)
The customer is never wrong.
In R. Nevill and C. E. Jerningham Piccadilly to Pall Mall (1908) p. 94
18.44 Joan Riviere
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1883-
Civilization and its discontents.
Title of translation of Sigmund Freud's Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930)
18.45 Lord Robbins (Lionel Charles Robbins, Baron Robbins)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1984
Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship
between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.
Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932) ch. 1,
sect. 3
18.46 Leo Robin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-
Diamonds are a girl's best friend.
Title of song (1949; music by Jule Styne)
18.47 Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Children of the Night (1897) "Richard Cory"
I shall have more to say when I am dead.
The Three Taverns (1920) "John Brown" (last line)
Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
The Town down the River (1910) "Miniver Cheevy"
18.49 Rt. Rev John Robinson (Bishop of Woolwich)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1919-1983
What Lawrence is trying to do, I think, is to portray the sex relation as
something sacred....I think Lawrence tried to portray this relation as in
a real sense an act of holy communion. For him flesh was sacramental of
the spirit.
Said as defence witness in case brought against Penguin Books for
publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover, 27 Oct. 1960, in The Times 28 Oct.
1960
18.50 John D. Rockefeller
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1839-1937
The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest....The
American beauty rose can be produced in the splendour and fragrance which
bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow
up around it.
In W. J. Ghent Our Benevolent Feudalism (1902) p. 29
Space--the final frontier....These are the voyages of the starship
Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek
out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone
before.
Introduction to Star Trek (television series) 1966 onwards, in James A.
Lely Star Trek (1979) p. 32
Beam us up, Mr Scott.
Star Trek (television series 1966 onwards) "Gamesters of Triskelion"
(often quoted as the catch-phrase "Beam me up, Scotty ," which was not
actually used in the series)
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The Waking (1953) p. 120
18.55 Will Rogers
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1935
There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.
Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949) ch. 6
The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit
that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks
the best.
Illiterate Digest (1924) "Breaking into the Writing Game"
The Income Tax has made more Liars out of the American people than Golf
has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's
through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.
Illiterate Digest (1924) "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes"
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.
Illiterate Digest (1924) "Warning to Jokers: lay off the prince"
Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.
New York Times 30 Sept. 1923
You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
In New York Times 31 Aug. 1924
You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they
kill you in a new way.
New York Times 23 Dec. 1929
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we
have rushed through life trying to save.
Letter in New York Times 29 Apr. 1930
I bet you if I had met him [Trotsky] and had a chat with him, I would have
found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man
that I didn't like.
In Saturday Evening Post 6 Nov. 1926
I don't make jokes--I just watch the government and report the facts.
In Saturday Review 25 Aug. 1962
Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work.
Weekly Articles (1981) vol. 3, p. 93 (first pubd. 1927)
Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.
Newspaper article, 15 Feb. 1925, in Paula McSpadden Grove The Will Rogers
Book (1961) p. 193
18.56 Frederick William Rolfe ('Baron Corvo')
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1913
"There is no Holiness here," George interrupted, in that cold, white,
candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more
thrilling than a scream.
Hadrian VII (1904) ch. 21
Pray for the repose of His soul. He was so tired.
Hadrian VII (1904) ch. 24
18.57 Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
In Catholic Digest Aug. 1960, p. 102
18.59 Franklin D. Roosevelt
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1945
It is fun to be in the same decade with you.
Cable to Winston Churchill, replying to congratulations on Roosevelt's
60th birthday, in W. S. Churchill Hinge of Fate (1950) ch. 4
These unhappy times call for the building of plans that...build from the
bottom up...that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the
bottom of the economic pyramid.
Radio address, 7 Apr. 1932, in Public Papers (1938) vol. 1, p. 625
I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let
us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of
competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is
a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in
this crusade to restore America to its own people.
Speech to Democratic Convention in Chicago, 2 July 1932, accepting
nomination for presidency, in Public Papers (1938) vol. 1, p. 647
First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to
fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Inaugural address, 4 Mar. 1933, in Public Papers (1938) vol. 2, p. 11
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of
the good neighbour.
Inaugural address, 4 Mar. 1933, in Public Papers (1938) vol. 2, p. 14
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood
running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs.
I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen
200 limping, exhausted men come out of line--the survivors of a regiment
of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children
starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
Speech at Chautauqua, NY, 14 Aug. 1936, in Public Papers (1936) vol. 5,
p. 289
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
Second inaugural address, 20 Jan. 1937, in Public Papers (1941) vol. 6,
p. 5
When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere
is in danger.
"Fireside Chat" radio broadcast, 3 Sept. 1939, in Public Papers (1941)
vol. 8, p. 461
I am reminded of four definitions: A Radical is a man with both feet
firmly planted--in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly
good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary
is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs
and his hands at the behest--at the command--of his head.
Radio address to New York Herald Tribune Forum, 26 Oct. 1939, in Public
Papers (1941) vol. 8, p. 556
And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more
assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and
again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
Speech in Boston, 30 Oct. 1940, in Public Papers (1941) vol. 9, p. 517
We have the men--the skill--the wealth--and above all, the will. We must
be the great arsenal of democracy.
"Fireside Chat" radio broadcast, 29 Dec. 1940, in Public Papers (1941)
vol. 9, p. 643
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to
a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom
of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom
of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means
economic understanding which will secure to every nation a healthy
peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world. The fourth is
freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide
reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that
no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression
against any neighbour--anywhere in the world.
Message to Congress, 6 Jan. 1941, in Public Papers (1941) vol. 9, p. 672
Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live on in infamy--the
United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval
and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Address to Congress, 8 Dec. 1941, in Public Papers (1950) vol. 10, p. 514
The work, my friend, is peace. More than an end of this war--an end to the
beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end forever to this impractical,
unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass
killings of peoples.
Undelivered address for Jefferson Day, 13 Apr. 1945 (the day after
Roosevelt died) in Public Papers (1950) vol. 13, p. 615
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
Undelivered address for Jefferson Day, 13 Apr. 1945, final lines, in
Public Papers (1950) vol. 13, p. 616
We all know that books burn--yet we have the greater knowledge that books
can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no
force can abolish memory. No man and no force can put thought in
a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world
the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind.
In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your
dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.
"Message to the Booksellers of America" read at banquet, 6 May 1942, in
Publisher's Weekly 9 May 1942
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he
shall be able and willing to pull his weight.
Speech in New York, 11 Nov. 1902, in Addresses and Presidential Messages
1902-4 (1904) p. 85
A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough
to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled
to, and less than that no man shall have.
Speech at the Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Illinois, 4 June 1903, in
Addresses and Presidential Messages 1902-4 (1904) p. 224
[William] McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate ‚clair!
In H. T. Peck Twenty Years of the Republic (1906) p. 642
There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big
stick; you will go far." If the American nation will speak softly, and yet
build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient
navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.
Speech at Chicago, 3 Apr. 1903, in New York Times 4 Apr. 1903
There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room
here for only 100 per cent. Americanism, only for those who are Americans
and nothing else.
Speech in Saratoga, 19 July 1918, in Roosevelt Policy (1919) vol. 3,
p. 1079
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of
the strenuous life.
Speech to the Hamilton Club, Chicago, 10 Apr. 1899, in Works, Memorial
edition (1925), vol. 15, p. 267
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
In Works, Memorial edition (1925) vol. 15, p. 388 "Latitude and Longitude
among Reformers"
The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of
society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.
Speech in Washington, 14 Apr. 1906, in Works, Memorial edition (1925)
vol. 18, p. 574
A hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of
the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German
or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter
of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the
United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other
allegiance.
Speech in New York, 12 Oct. 1915, in Works, Memorial edition (1925)
vol. 20, p. 457
There are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and
always discrediting it--the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform
movements.
Autobiography (1913) ch. 7, in Works, Memorial edition (1925) vol. 22,
p. 247
I wish in this campaign to do...whatever is likely to produce the best
results for the Republican ticket. I am as strong as a bull moose and you
can use me to the limit.
Letter to Mark Hanna, 27 June 1900, in Works, Memorial edition (1926)
vol. 23, p. 162 ("Bull Moose" became the popular name of the Progressive
Party)
One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called
"weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the
egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another, there is nothing left of
the other.
Speech in St Louis, 31 May 1916, in Works, Memorial edition (1926)
vol. 24, p. 483
Good to the last drop.
Said to Joel Cheek in 1907 about Maxwell House coffee, and subsequently
used as an advertising slogan
18.61 Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Any time you're Lambeth way,
Any evening, any day,
You'll find us all
Doin' the Lambeth Walk.
Lambeth Walk (1937 song; music by Noel Gay)
18.62 Billy Rose
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1966
Me and my shadow.
Title of song (1927; music by Al Jolson and Dave Dreyer)
18.63 Billy Rose and Marty Bloom
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Billy Rose 1899-1966
Marty Bloom
Does the spearmint lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?
Title of song (1924; music by Ernest Breuer; revived in 1959 by Lonnie
Donegan with the title "Does your chewing-gum lose its flavour on the
bedpost overnight?")
18.64 Billy Rose and Willie Raskin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Billy Rose 1899-1966
Willie Raskin 1896-1942
Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
Title of song (1927; music by Fred Fisher). Cf. Texas Guinan
18.65 William Rose
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-1987
The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.
Title of film (1966)
18.66 Lord Rosebery (Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery)
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1847-1929
There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire,
because the Empire is a commonwealth of nations.
Speech in Adelaide, Australia, 18 Jan. 1884, in Marquess of Crewe Lord
Rosebery (1931) vol. 1, ch. 7
And now we cannot but observe that it is beginning to be hinted that we
are a nation of amateurs.
Rectorial Address at Glasgow University, 16 Nov. 1900, in The Times
17 Nov. 1900
I must plough my furrow alone. That is my fate, agreeable or the reverse;
but before I get to the end of that furrow it is possible that I may find
myself not alone.
Speech at City of London Liberal Club, 19 July 1901, on remaining outside
Liberal Party leadership, in The Times 20 July 1901
18.67 Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg
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Ethel Rosenberg 1916-1953
Julius Rosenberg 1918-1953
We are innocent, as we have proclaimed and maintained from the time of our
arrest. This is the whole truth. To forsake this truth is to pay too high
a price even for the priceless gift of life--for life thus purchased we
could not live out in dignity and self-respect.
Petition for executive clemency, filed 9 Jan. 1953, in Ethel Rosenberg
Death House Letters (1953) p. 149
Ethel wants it made known that we are the first victims of American
Fascism.
Letter from Julius to Emanuel Bloch before their execution for espionage,
19 June 1953, in Ethel Rosenberg Testament of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
(1954) p. 187
18.68 Alan S. C. Ross
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1907-1980
U and Non-U. An essay in sociological linguistics.
Title of essay in Nancy Mitford Noblesse Oblige (1956), first published in
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (1954)
18.69 Harold Ross
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1892-1951
Usually he [Ross] confined himself to written comments. His later famed
"What mean?" "Who he?" and the like began to appear on manuscripts and
proofs.
Dale Kramer Ross and The New Yorker (1952) ch. 13
The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady
in Dubuque.
In James Thurber The Years with Ross (1959) ch. 4
"I don't want you to think I'm not incoherent," he [Ross] once rattled off
to somebody in "21."
James Thurber The Years with Ross (1959) ch. 5
I understand the hero [of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms] keeps getting in
bed with women, and the war wasn't fought that way.
In James Thurber The Years with Ross (1959) ch. 7
18.70 Sir Ronald Ross
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1857-1932
This day relenting God
Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God
Be praised. At his command,
Seeking His secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death.
I know this little thing
A myriad men will save,
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory, O Grave?
Philosophies (1910) "In Exile" pt. 7 (describing his part in discovering
the life-cycle of the malaria parasite in 1897; cf. Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (1979) 77:1)
18.71 Jean Rostand
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1894-1977
Mon pessimisme va jusqu'… suspecter la sinc‚rit‚ des pessimistes.
My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the
pessimists.
Journal d'un caractЉre(Journal of a Character, 1931)
°tre adulte, c'est €tre seul.
To be adult is to be alone.
Pens‚es d'un biologiste (Thoughts of a Biologist, 1954) p. 134
On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est
conqu‚rant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu.
Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a
conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
Pens‚es d'un biologiste (Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939) p. 116
18.72 Leo Rosten
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1908-
The only thing I can say about W. C. Fields, whom I have admired since the
day he advanced upon Baby LeRoy with an ice pick, is this: any man who
hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
Speech at Hollywood dinner in honour of W. C. Fields, 16 Feb. 1939, in
Saturday Review 12 June 1976
18.73 Philip Roth
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1933-
A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain
a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!
Portnoy's Complaint (1967) p. 111
Doctor, my doctor, what do you say, LET'S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID!
Portnoy's Complaint (1967) p. 124
18.74 Dan Rowan and Dick Martin
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Dan Rowan 1922-1987
Dick Martin 1923-
Very interesting...but stupid.
Catch-phrase in Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (American television series,
1967-73)
18.75 Helen Rowland
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1875-1950
A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.
A Guide to Men (1922) p. 19
Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of
beauty and a boy forever.
A Guide to Men (1922) p. 25
The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he
didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
A Guide to Men (1922) p. 87
When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work
for a living.
Reflections of a Bachelor Girl (1909) p. 45
18.76 Richard Rowland
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?1881-1947
The lunatics have taken charge of the asylum.
Comment on take-over of United Artists by Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford,
Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, in Terry Ramsaye A Million and One
Nights (1926) vol. 2, ch. 79
The Church should go forward along the path of progress and be no longer
satisfied only to represent the Conservative Party at prayer.
Address at Queen's Hall, London, 16 July 1917, in The Times 17 July 1917
I know two things about the horse
And one of them is rather coarse.
Weekend Book (1928) p. 231
18.79 Paul Alfred Rubens
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1875-1917
Oh! we don't want to lose you but we think you ought to go
For your King and your Country both need you so;
We shall want you and miss you but with all our might and main
We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you
When you come back again.
Your King and Country Want You (1914 song)
I do see her in tough joints more than somewhat.
Collier's 22 May 1930, "Social Error"
"You are snatching a hard guy when you snatch Bookie Bob. A very hard guy,
indeed. In fact," I say, "I hear the softest thing about him is his front
teeth."
Collier's 26 Sept. 1931, "Snatching of Bookie Bob"
I always claim the mission workers came out too early to catch any sinners
on this part of Broadway. At such an hour the sinners are still in bed
resting up from their sinning of the night before, so they will be in good
shape for more sinning a little later on.
Collier's 28 Jan. 1933, "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown"
"In fact," Sam the Gonoph says, "I long ago come to the conclusion that
all life is 6 to 5 against."
Collier's 8 Sept. 1934, "A Nice Price"
"My boy," he says, "always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up
against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you."
Cosmopolitan Aug. 1929, "A Very Honourable Guy"
18.81 Dean Rusk
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1909-
We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.
Comment on Cuban missile crisis, 24 Oct. 1962, in Saturday Evening Post
8 Dec. 1962
18.82 Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William, third Earl Russell)
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1872-1970
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:
the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for
the suffering of mankind.
Autobiography (1967) vol. 1, prologue
I was told that the Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake
and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did
not happen as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic
for an atheist.
Autobiography (1968) vol. 2, ch. 3
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the
fact.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 1
Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins
of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 4
One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that
one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring
all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a
holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 5
Envy is the basis of democracy.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 6
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to
avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond
this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to
interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 9
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations.
People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 10
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true
happiness.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 12
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of
civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 14
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was
twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by
examining his wives' mouths.
Impact of Science on Society (1952) ch. 1
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that
it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority
of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than
sensible.
Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 5
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead.
Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 19
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we
are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
Mysticism and Logic (1917) ch. 4
Only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's
habitation henceforth be safely built.
Philosophical Essays (1910) no. 2
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme
beauty--a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
Philosophical Essays (1910) no. 4
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground
whatever for supposing it is true.
Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to
moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting
convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Dreams and Facts"
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful, and valued because
they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous, and loathed
because they impose slavery.
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Machines and Emotions"
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach
but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness"
It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal
definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks
the magistrate."
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Recrudescence of Puritanism"
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that
they want their children to be a credit to them.
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Freedom versus Authority in Education"
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of
good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Unpopular Essays (1950) "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of
cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of
truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life.
Unpopular Essays (1950) "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"
18.83 Dora Russell (Countess Russell)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1894-1986
We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent
them.
Hypatia (1925) ch. 4
18.84 George William Russell
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See AE (1.15)
18.85 John Russell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1919-
Certain phrases stick in the throat, even if they offer nothing that is
analytically improbable. "A dashing Swiss officer" is one such. Another
is "the beautiful Law Courts."
Paris (1960) ch. 11
18.86 Ernest Rutherford (Baron Rutherford of Nelson)
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1871-1937
I do not...want to give the impression that the use of large machines or
of elaborate techniques is always justified; sometimes it contributes
merely to the sense of self-importance of the investigator, and it is
always salutary to remember Rutherford's "We haven't got the money, so
we've got to think!"
R. V. Jones in Bulletin of the Institute of Physics (1962) vol. 13, p. 102
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
In J. B. Birks Rutherford at Manchester (1962) p. 108
A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts
belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode
a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them. And
this is what I am trying to do.
Concept of Mind (1949) introduction
Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines.
Concept of Mind (1949) introduction
Such in outline is the official theory. I shall often speak of it, with
deliberate abusiveness, as "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine."
Concept of Mind (1949) ch. 1 (referring to Descartes' mental-conduct
concepts)
19.0 S
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19.1 Rafael Sabatini
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1875-1950
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
And that was all his patrimony.
Scaramouche (1921) bk. 1, ch. 1
19.2 Oliver Sacks
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1933-
The man who mistook his wife for a hat.
Title of book (1985)
19.3 Victoria ('Vita') Sackville-West
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1892-1962
The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and different skies,
And night with different stars.
King's Daughter (1929) pt. 2, no. 1 "The Greater Cats with Golden Eyes"
The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun.
The Land (1926) "Winter"
Rien n'est plus affreux que le rire pour la jalousie.
To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.
La Chamade (1965) ch. 9
19.5 Antoine de Saint-Exup‚ry
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1900-1944
Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est
fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des
explications.
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for
children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince, 1943) ch. 1
On ne voit bien qu'avec le c”ur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is
invisible to the eye.
Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince, 1943) ch. 21
L'exp‚rience nous montre qu' aimer ce n'est point nous regarder l'un
l'autre mais regarder ensemble dans la m€me direction.
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but
in looking together in the same direction.
Terre des Hommes (translated as "Wind, Sand and Stars," 1939) ch. 8
19.6 George Saintsbury
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1845-1933
I have never yet given a second-hand opinion of any thing, or book, or
person.
Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920) "Preliminary"
"But why should you want to shield him?" cried Egbert; "the man is a
common murderer." "A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook."
Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914) "The Blind Spot"
"Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death,"
said Clovis.
Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914) "The Feast of Nemesis"
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
Chronicles of Clovis (1911) "The Match-Maker"
"I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," he resumed
presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it,
they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive
at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the
thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the
sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster."
Chronicles of Clovis (1911) "The Match-Maker"
All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't
respectable live beyond other peoples'. A few gifted individuals manage to
do both.
Chronicles of Clovis (1911) "The Match-Maker"
The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume
locally.
Chronicles of Clovis (1911) "The Jesting of Arlington Stringham"
His socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect.
Chronicles of Clovis (1911) "Ministers of Grace"
People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity; the
religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald on Christmas Presents"
Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf
to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald on the Academy"
I always say beauty is only sin deep.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald's Choir Treat"
Her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English
accent.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald on Worries"
The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have
reminiscences of what never happened.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald at the Carlton"
There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints,
but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have
forseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with
racehorses and the cheaper clarets.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald at the Carlton"
The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as good cooks go, she went.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald on Besetting Sins"
Women and elephants never forget an injury.
Reginald (1904) "Reginald on Besetting Sins"
The Young Turkish candidate, who had conformed to the Western custom of
one wife and hardly any mistresses, stood by helplessly while his
adversary's poll swelled to a triumphant majority.
Reginald in Russia (1910) "A Young Turkish Catastrophe"
The death of John Pennington had left his widow in circumstances which
were more straitened than ever, and the Park had receded even from her
notepaper, where it had long been retained as a courtesy title on the
principle that addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.
Reginald in Russia (1910) "Cross Currents"
But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect
a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.
Reginald in Russia (1910) "The Baker's Dozen"
I should be the last person to say anything against temptation, naturally,
but we have a proverb down here "in baiting a mouse-trap with cheese,
always leave room for the mouse."
The Square Egg (1924) "The Infernal Parliament"
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
The Square Egg (1924) "Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business"
Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older;
they merely know more.
Toys of Peace and Other Papers (1919) "Hyacinth"
A buzz of recognition came from the front rows of the pit, together with
a craning of necks on the part of those in less favoured seats. It
heralded the arrival of Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered
himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world.
The Unbearable Bassington (1912) ch. 13
19.8 J. D. Salinger
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1919-
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want
to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how
my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David
Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.
Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 1
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it,
you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you
could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 3
Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where
the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I
break them right away.
Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 9
The only thing old Phoebe liked was when Hamlet patted this dog on the
head. She thought that was funny and nice, and it was. What I'll have to
do is, I'll have to read that play. The trouble with me is, I always have
to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen.
I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phoney every
minute.
Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 16
Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get
a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles
they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start
thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like
old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam
horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 17
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye?' I'd
like--"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said.
"It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the
rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep
picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye
and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big,
I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What
I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the
cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going
I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all
day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but
that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 22
A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink
a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride.
Seymour: an Introduction (1959) in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
and Seymour: an Introduction (1963) p. 195
19.9 Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, fifth Marquess of Salisbury)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1972
He is, as we all know, a man of most unusual intellectual brilliance; and
he is, moreover, both brave and resolute. Those are valuable and not too
common attributes in politics. But the fact remains that I believe he has
adopted, especially in his relationship to the white communities of
Africa, a most unhappy and an entirely wrong approach. He has been too
clever by half.
Said of Iain Macleod, Colonial Secretary, in Hansard (House of Lords)
7 Mar. 1961, col. 307
19.10 Anthony Sampson
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1926-
Members [of civil service orders] rise from CMG (known sometimes in
Whitehall as "Call Me God") to the KCMG ("Kindly Call Me God") to--for
a select few governors and super-ambassadors--the GCMG ("God Calls Me
God").
Anatomy of Britain (1962) ch. 18
19.11 Lord Samuel (Herbert Louis, first Viscount Samuel)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1870-1963
A library is thought in cold storage.
A Book of Quotations (1947) p. 10
It takes two to make a marriage a success and only one a failure.
A Book of Quotations (1947) p. 115
Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on
myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and
disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built.
Romanes Lecture, 1947, p. 14
19.12 Carl Sandburg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1878-1967
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look
through to guess about what is seen during a moment.
Atlantic Monthly Mar. 1923 "Poetry Considered"
Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Atlantic Monthly Mar. 1923 "Poetry Considered"
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.
Chicago Poems (1916) "Chicago"
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Chicago Poems (1916) "Fog"
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
Cornhuskers (1918) "Prairie"
When Abraham Lincoln was shovelled into the tombs,
he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...
in the dust, in the cool tombs.
Cornhuskers (1918) "Cool Tombs"
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.
Cornhuskers (1918) "Grass"
I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on the way.
Incidentals (1907) p. 8
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes
to work.
In New York Times 13 Feb. 1959, p. 21
Little girl...Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
The People, Yes (1936) (cf. Charlotte Keyes in McCall's Oct. 1966
"Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came?"; a 1970 American film was
entitled "Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?")
Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?
Smoke and Steel (1920) "The Lawyers Know Too Much"
19.13 Henry 'Red' Sanders
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Sure, winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.
In Sports Illustrated 26 Dec. 1955 (often attributed to Vince Lombardi)
19.14 William Sansom
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1926-1976
A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling
he has of the good or the evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at
it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.
Blue Skies, Brown Studies (1961) "From a Writer's Notebook"
19.15 George Santayana
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1863-1952
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not
laugh is a fool.
Dialogues in Limbo (1925) ch. 3
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your
aim.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, Introduction
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence
remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, ch. 10
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness....
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, ch. 12
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer
unhappiness.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 2, ch. 2
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 3
Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension
which lends utility to its conditions.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4
An artist may visit a museum, but only a pedant can live there.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 7
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in
itself and not in its subject.
Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 8
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have
loved it.
Little Essays (1920) "Ideal Immortality"
England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies,
hobbies, and humours.
Soliloquies in England (1922) "The British Character"
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
Soliloquies in England (1922) "War Shrines"
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially
true.
The Unknowable (1923) p. 4
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
always old-fashioned.
Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 2
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly
is to share it.
Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 4
Today, thanks to technical progress, the radio and television, to which we
devote so many of the leisure hours once spent listening to parlour
chatter and parlour music, have succeeded in lifting the manufacture of
banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major
industry.
Times Literary Supplement 10 June 1960
Quand les riches se font la guerre ce sont les pauvres qui meurent.
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
Le Diable et le bon Dieu (The Devil and the Good Lord, 1951) act 1, first
tableau
L' ‚crivain doit donc refuser de se laisser transformer en institution.
A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an
institution.
Declaration read at Stockholm, 22 Oct. 1964, refusing the Nobel Prize, in
Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (eds.) Les ђcrits de Sartre (1970)
p. 403
L'existence pr‚cЉde et commande l'essence.
Existence precedes and rules essence.
L'°tre et le n‚ant (Being and Nothingness, 1943) pt. 4, ch. 1
Je suis condemn‚ … €tre libre.
I am condemned to be free.
L'°tre et le n‚ant (Being and Nothingness, 1943) pt. 4, ch. 1
L' homme est une passion inutile.
Man is a useless passion.
L'°tre et le n‚ant (Being and Nothingness, 1943) pt. 4, ch. 2
Alors, c'est ‡a l'Enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru.... Vous vous rappelez: le
soufre, le b–cher, le gril.... Ah! quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de
gril, l' Enfer, c'est les Autres.
So that's what Hell is: I'd never have believed it.... Do you remember,
brimstone, the stake, the gridiron?... What a joke! No need of a gridiron,
Hell is other people.
Huis Clos (Closed Doors, 1944) sc. 5
Il n'y a pas de bon pЉre, c'est la rЉgle; qu'on n'en tienne pas grief aux
hommes mais au lien de paternit‚ qui est pourri. Faire des enfants, rien
de mieux; en avoir, quelle iniquit‚!
There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but
on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing
better; to have them, what iniquity!
Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "Lire"
Les bons pauvres ne savent pas que leur office est d'exercer notre
g‚n‚rosit‚.
The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our
generosity.
Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "Lire"
Elle [ma grand-mЉre] ne croyait … rien; seul, son scepticism l'emp€chait
d'€tre ath‚e.
She [my grandmother] believed in nothing; only her scepticism kept her
from being an atheist.
Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "Lire"
Comme tous les songe-creux, je confondis le d‚senchantement avec la
v‚rit‚.
Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "ђcrire"
Je confondis les choses avec leurs noms: c'est croire.
I confused things with their names: that is belief.
Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "ђcrire"
Trois heures, c'est toujours trop tard ou trop t“t pour ce qu'on veut
faire.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
La Naus‚e (Nausea, 1938) "Vendredi"
Ma pens‚e, c'est moi: voil… pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arr€ter. J'existe
par ce que je pense...et je ne peux pas m'emp€cher de penser.
My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist by what I think...and
I can't prevent myself from thinking.
La Naus‚e (Nausea, 1938) "Lundi"
Je d‚teste les victimes quand elles respectent leurs bourreaux.
I hate victims who respect their executioners.
Les S‚questr‚s d'Altona (The Condemned of Altona, 1960) act 1, sc. 1
Je me m‚fie des incommunicables, c'est la source de toute violence.
I distrust the incommunicable: it is the source of all violence.
Les Temps Modernes July 1947, p. 106, "Qu'est-ce que la litt‚rature?"
(What is Literature?)
Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
Counter-Attack (1918) "Dreamers"
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
Counter-Attack (1918) "Dreamers"
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say--"I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
Counter-Attack (1918) "Base Details"
"Good-morning; good morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
Counter-Attack (1918) "The General"
Does it matter?--losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Counter-Attack (1918) "Does it Matter?"
Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,--
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
The Heart's Journey (1928) "On Passing the New Menin Gate"
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military
authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged
by those who have the power to end it.
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) pt. 10, ch. 2
I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"--
And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
The Old Huntsman (1917) "Blighters"
And he'd come home again to find it more
Desirable than it ever was before.
How right it seemed that he should reach the span
Of comfortable years allowed to man!
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,
And thought: "Thank God they had to amputate!"
The Old Huntsman (1917) "The One-Legged Man"
Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen cold
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's glittering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
War Poems (1919) "The Dug-Out"
But the past is just the same,--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.
War Poems (1919) "Aftermath"
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears and horror
Drifted away...O but every one
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
War Poems (1919) "Everyone Sang"
19.22 Erik Satie
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1866-1925
Ravel refuse la L‚gion d'Honneur, mais son ”uvre l'accepte.
Ravel refuses the Legion of Honour, but all his music accepts it.
In Jean Cocteau Le Discours d'Oxford (1956) p. 49
Who loves ya, baby?
Catch-phrase in American TV series Kojak (1973-8)
19.24 Dorothy L. Sayers
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1893-1957
I admit it is better fun to punt than to be punted, and that a desire to
have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.
Gaudy Night (1935) ch. 14
With a gesture of submission he bowed his head and stood gravely, the
square cap dangling in his hand. "Placetne, magistra?" "Placet."
Gaudy Night (1935) ch. 23 (Lord Peter Wimsey's marriage proposal to
Harriet Vane, and her acceptance)
Plain lies are dangerous: the only weapons left him [the advertiser] are
the suggestio falsi and the suppressio veri, and his use even of these
would be very much more circumscribed if one person in ten had ever been
taught how to read. Those who prefer their English sloppy have only
themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of
vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds. The moral of all
this...is that we have the kind of advertising we deserve.
Spectator 19 Nov. 1937 "The Psychology of Advertising"
As I grow older and older,
And totter towards the tomb,
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom.
"That's Why I Never Read Modern Novels," in Janet Hitchman Such a Strange
Lady (1975) ch. 12
19.25 Al Scalpone
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The family that prays together stays together.
Slogan devised for the Roman Catholic Family Rosary Crusade in 1947: see
Patrick Peyton All for Her (1967) p. 144
Of course liberty is not licence. Liberty in my view is conforming to
majority opinion.
Television interview, 9 Aug. 1977, in Listener 11 Aug. 1977
19.27 Arthur Scargill
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1938-
Parliament itself would not exist in its present form had people not
defied the law.
Said in evidence to House of Commons Select Committee on Employment,
2 Apr. 1980, in House of Commons Paper no. 462 of Session 1979-80 p. 55
19.28 Age Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, and Sergio Leone
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Age Scarpelli 1926-
Luciano Vincenzoni 1926-
Sergio Leone 1921-
Il buono, il bruto, il cattivo.
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Title of film (1966)
19.29 Moritz Schlick
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The meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification.
Philosophical Review (1936) vol. 45, p. 341 "Meaning and Verification"
19.30 Artur Schnabel
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1882-1951
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between
the notes--ah, that is where the art resides!
In Chicago Daily News 11 June 1958
Applause is a receipt, not a note of demand.
In Saturday Review of Literature 29 Sept. 1951
I don't think there was ever a piece of music that changed a man's
decision on how to vote.
My Life and Music (1961) pt. 2, ch. 8
When I am asked, "What do you think of our audience?" I answer, "I know
two kinds of audiences only--one coughing, and one not coughing."
My Life and Music (1961) pt. 2, ch. 10
19.31 Arnold Schoenberg
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1874-1951
If it is art, it is not for the masses. "If it is for the masses it is not
art" is a topic which is rather similar to a word of yourself.
Letter to W. S. Schlamm, 1 July 1945, in Erwin Stein Arnold Schoenberg
Letters (1964) p. 235
You don't understand. I could have had class. I could have been a
contender. I could have been somebody--instead of a bum, which is what
I am, let's face it.
On the Waterfront (1954 film; words spoken by Marlon Brando)
What makes Sammy run?
Title of novel (1941)
19.33 Diane B. Schulder
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1937-
Law is a reflection and a source of prejudice. It both enforces and
suggests forms of bias.
In Robin Morgan Sisterhood is Powerful (1970) p. 139
19.34 E. F. Schumacher
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1911-1977
Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man,
a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future
generations: as long as you have not shown it to be "uneconomic" you have
not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.
Small is Beautiful (1973) pt. 1, ch. 3
Small is beautiful. A study of economics as if people mattered.
Title of book (1973)
19.35 Albert Schweitzer
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1875-1965
Am Abend des dritten Tages, als wir bei Sonnenuntergang gerade durch eine
Herde Nilpferde hindurchfuhren, stand urpl”tzlich, von mir nicht geahnt
und nicht gesucht, das Wort "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben" vor mir.
Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making
our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind,
unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, "Reverence for Life."
Aus meinem Leben und Denken (My Life and Thought, 1933) ch. 13
"Heda, Kamerad," rufe ich, "willst du uns nicht ein wenig helfen?" "Ich
bin ein Intellektueller und trage Kein Holz," lautete die Antwort. "Hast
du GlЃck," erwiderte ich; "auch ich wollte ein Intellektueller werden,
aber es ist mir nicht gelungen."
"Hullo! friend," I call out, "Won't you lend us a hand?" "I am an
intellectual and don't drag wood about," came the answer. "You're lucky,"
I reply. "I too wanted to become an intellectual, but I didn't succeed."
Mitteilungen aus Lambarene (1928, tr. by C. T. Campion, 1931 as More from
the Primeval Forest) ch. 5
Die Wahrheit hat keine Stunde. Ihre Zeit ist immer und gerade dann wenn
sie am unzeitgem„ssesten scheint.
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now--always, and indeed
then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances.
Zwischen Wasser und Urwald (On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, 1922)
ch. 11
19.36 Kurt Schwitters
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1887-1948
Ich bin Maler, ich nagle meine Bilder.
I am a painter and I nail my pictures together.
Remark to Raoul Hausmann, 1918, in Raoul Hausmann Am Anfang war Dada (In
the Beginning was Dada, 1972) p. 63
19.37 Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Martin Scorsese 1942-
Mardik Martin
You don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the street, you do
it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.
Mean Streets (1973 film) in Michael Bliss Martin Scorsese and Michael
Cimino (1985) ch. 3
19.38 C. P. Scott
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1846-1932
A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is
to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering
of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not
tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in
the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong.
Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
Manchester Guardian 5 May 1921
19.39 Paul Scott
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1920-1978
The jewel in the crown.
Title of novel (1966)
19.40 Robert Falcon Scott
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1868-1912
Great God! this [the South Pole] is an awful place and terrible enough for
us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.
Diary, 17 Jan. 1912, in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol. 1, ch. 18
For God's sake look after our people.
Diary, 29 Mar. 1912, in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol. 1, ch. 20
Make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than
games; they encourage it in some schools.
Final letter to his wife, in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol. 1, ch. 20
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood,
endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart
of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the
tale.
"Message to the Public" in Scott's Last Expedition (1913) vol. 1, ch. 20
No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for
signs of improvement.
Measure of my Days (1968) p. 16
19.42 Alan Seeger
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1888-1916
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes round with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air.
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
North American Review Oct. 1916 "I Have a Rendezvous with Death"
19.43 Pete Seeger
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1919-
Where have all the flowers gone?
The girls have picked them every one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Where Have all the Flowers Gone? (1961 song) See also Anonymous (1.43)
19.44 Erich Segal
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1937-
Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.
Love Story (1970) ch. 13
19.45 W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman
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W. C. Sellar 1898-1951
R. J. Yeatman 1898-1968
For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty who
don't want to learn--much.
And Now All This (1932) introduction
The Roman Conquest was, however, a Good Thing, since the Britons were only
natives at the time.
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 1
The conversion of England was thus effected by the landing of St Augustine
in Thanet and other places, which resulted in the country being overrun by
a Wave of Saints. Among these were St Ive, St Pancra, the great St
Bernard (originator of the clerical collar), St Bee, St Ebb, St Neot (who
invented whisky), St Kit and St Kin, and the Venomous Bead (author of The
Rosary).
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 3
Edward III had very good manners. One day at a royal dance he noticed
some men-about-court mocking a lady whose garter had come off, whereupon
to put her at her ease he stopped the dance and made the memorable
epitaph: "Honi soie qui mal y pense" ("Honey, your silk stocking's
hanging down").
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 24
Shortly after this the cruel Queen died and a post-mortem examination
revealed the word "CALLOUS" engraved on her heart.
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 32
The utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic)
and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive).
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 35
Charles II was always very merry and was therefore not so much a king as a
Monarch.
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 36
The National Debt is a very Good Thing and it would be dangerous to pay it
off, for fear of Political Economy.
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 38
Napoleon's armies always used to march on their stomachs shouting: "Vive
l'Int‚rieur!" and so moved about very slowly (ventre-…-terre, as the
French say) thus enabling Wellington to catch them up and defeat them.
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 48
Gladstone also invented the Education Rate by which it was possible to
calculate how soon anybody could be educated, and he spent his declining
years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately
whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question.
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 57
AMERICA was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a .
1066 and All That (1930) ch. 62
Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.
1066 and All That (1930) "Test Paper 5"
19.46 Robert W. Service
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1874-1958
Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.
Ballads of a Bohemian (1921) "It Is Later Than You Think"
When we, the Workers, all demand: "What are WE fighting for?."..
Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness--War.
Ballads of a Bohemian (1921) "Michael"
This is the law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon,--Lo, how she makes it plain!
Songs of a Sourdough (1907) "The Law of the Yukon"
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as
Lou.
Songs of a Sourdough (1907) "Shootings of Dan McGrew"
A promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
Songs of a Sourdough (1907) "Cremation of Sam McGee"
19.47 Anne Sexton
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1928-1974
In a dream you are never eighty.
All My Pretty Ones (1962) "Old"
19.48 James Seymour and Rian James
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-
You're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star.
42nd Street (1933 film)
19.49 Peter Shaffer
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1926-
All my wife has ever taken from the Mediterranean--from that whole vast
intuitive culture--are four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps, and two
china condiment donkeys labelled Sally and Peppy.
Equus (1973) act 1, sc. 18
Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.
Equus (1973) act 2, sc. 35
The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people
present.
In New York Times Magazine 17 Mar. 1968
19.51 Bill Shankly
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1914-1981
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.
In Sunday Times 4 Oct. 1981
19.52 Tom Sharpe
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1928-
The South African police would leave no stone unturned to see that nothing
disturbed the even terror of their lives.
Indecent Exposure (1973) ch. 1
Skullion had little use for contraceptives at the best of times.
Unnatural, he called them, and placed them in the lower social category of
things along with elastic-sided boots and made-up bow ties. Not the sort
of attire for a gentleman.
Porterhouse Blue (1974) ch. 9
19.53 George Bernard Shaw
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1856-1950
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Annajanska (1919) p. 262
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who havnt and
dont.
The Apple Cart (1930) act 1
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to
keep a motor car?
The Apple Cart (1930) act 1
Breakages, Limited, the biggest industrial corporation in the country.
The Apple Cart (1930) act 1
I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad
for me do not tempt me.
The Apple Cart (1930) interlude
Arms and the man.
Title of play (1898). Cf. Virgil in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979)
557:8
You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and
cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old
ones, grub.
Arms and the Man (1898) act 1
Oh, you are a very poor soldier--a chocolate cream soldier!
Arms and the Man (1898) act 1
I never apologize!
Arms and the Man (1898) act 3
Youre not a man, youre a machine.
Arms and the Man (1898) act 3
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and
I say "Why not?"
Back to Methuselah (1921) pt. 1, act 1
Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is
a great and blessed invention.
Back to Methuselah (1921) pt. 1, act 1
I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes illness worth while.
Back to Methuselah (1921) pt. 2
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Back to Methuselah (1921) pt. 5
Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be
delightful.
Back to Methuselah (1921) pt. 5
A strange lady giving an address in Zurich wrote him [Shaw] a proposal,
thus: "You have the greatest brain in the world, and I have the most
beautiful body; so we ought to produce the most perfect child." Shaw
asked: "What if the child inherits my body and your brains?"
In Hesketh Pearson Bernard Shaw (1942) p. 310
He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are
the laws of nature.
Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) act 2 (said by Caesar of his secretary,
a Briton)
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares
that it is his duty.
Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) act 3
He who has never hoped can never despair.
Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) act 4
A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without
originality or moral courage.
Notes to Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) "Julius Caesar"
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to
consume wealth without producing it.
Candida (1898) act 1
Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any
less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are
more true: they are the only things that are true.
Candida (1898) act 1
It is easy--terribly easy--to shake a man's faith in himself. To take
advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
Candida (1898) act 1
I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller.
Candida (1898) act 3
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be
indifferent to them: thats the essence of inhumanity.
The Devil's Disciple (1901) act 2
Martyrdom...is the only way in which a man can become famous without
ability.
The Devil's Disciple (1901) act 3
I never expect a soldier to think.
The Devil's Disciple (1901) act 3
swindon: "What will history say?"
burgoyne: "History, sir, will tell lies as usual."
The Devil's Disciple (1901) act 3
Your friend the British soldier can stand up to anything except the
British War Office.
The Devil's Disciple (1901) act 3
There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all
diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.
The Doctor's Dilemma (1911) act 1
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
The Doctor's Dilemma (1911) act 1
I don't believe in morality. I am a disciple of Bernard Shaw.
The Doctor's Dilemma (1911) act 3
I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of
design, the mystery of colour, the redemption of all things by Beauty
everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed.
Amen. Amen.
The Doctor's Dilemma (1911) act 4
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is
ever imposed in the interest of the children.
Everybody's Political What's What? (1944) ch. 9
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support
of Paul.
Everybody's Political What's What? (1944) ch. 30
It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up
to date.
Fanny's First Play (1914) "Induction"
You don't expect me to know what to say about a play when I don't know who
the author is, do you?
Fanny's First Play (1914) epilogue
If it's by a good author, it's a good play, naturally. That stands to
reason.
Fanny's First Play (1914) epilogue
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is
natural to a cockatoo.
Getting Married (1911) preface "Hearth and Home"
The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against
the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the
obligation to become the servant of a man.
Getting Married (1911) preface "The Right to Motherhood"
Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the
farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than
chickens and calves, and that men and women are not so completely enslaved
as farm stock.
Getting Married (1911) preface "The Personal Sentimental Basis of
Monogamy"
What God hath joined together no man ever shall put asunder: God will take
care of that.
Getting Married (1911) p. 216
Sam wanted to make a Goldwyn writer of George Bernard Shaw. They
discussed it over tea one day in London.... A version of the conversation
was cabled over to Howard Dietz, Goldwyn's publicity chief; he compressed
Shaw's words into: "The trouble, Mr Goldwyn, is that you are only
interested in art and I am only interested in money." This was cabled back
to London and released there. It added considerably to Shaw's reputation
as a wit.
Alva Johnson The Great Goldwyn (1937) ch. 3
I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can assure you that if you will
only take the trouble always to do the perfectly correct thing, and to say
the perfectly correct thing, you can do just what you like.
Heartbreak House (1919) act 1
Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and
really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables
are the real centre of the household.
Heartbreak House (1919) act 3
The captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is
gambling in the forecastle. She will strike and sink and split. Do you
think the laws of God will be suspended in favour of England because you
were born in it?
Heartbreak House (1919) act 3
Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and
successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its
basis.
The Irrational Knot (1905) preface
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
The Irrational Knot (1905) ch. 14
A man who has no office to go to--I don't care who he is--is a trial of
which you can have no conception.
The Irrational Knot (1905) ch. 18
An Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination.
John Bull's Other Island (1907) act 1
My way of joking is to tell the truth. Its the funniest joke in the world.
John Bull's Other Island (1907) act 2
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
John Bull's Other Island (1907) act 4
There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency,
and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.
John Bull's Other Island (1907) act 4
The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty. our first
duty--a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed--is
not to be poor.
Major Barbara (1907) preface
The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our
civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the
most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honour,
generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it
represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the
least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it
fortifies and dignifies noble people.
Major Barbara (1907) preface
Cusins is a very nice fellow, certainly: nobody would ever guess that he
was born in Australia.
Major Barbara (1907) act 1
Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an
educated gentleman.
Major Barbara (1907) act 1
I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.
Major Barbara (1907) act 2
I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes.
Major Barbara (1907) act 2
Wot prawce Selvytion nah?
Major Barbara (1907) act 2
Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions
of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober.
It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person
would do at eleven in the morning.
Major Barbara (1907) act 2
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly
to a political career.
Major Barbara (1907) act 3
The sixth Undershaft wrote up these words: Nothing is ever done in this
world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
Major Barbara (1907) act 3
Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one
young woman and another.
Major Barbara (1907) act 3
But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell
on earth.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves,
of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our
experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation. She sacrifices herself
to it.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his
mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but
his art.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the
struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.
Man and Superman (1903) act 1
Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that
sort of place. They teach you to be a gentleman there. In the Polytechnic
they teach you to be an engineer or such like.
Man and Superman (1903) act 2
You think that you are Ann's suitor; that you are the pursuer and she the
pursued; that it is your part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to
overcome. Fool: it is you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the
destined prey.
Man and Superman (1903) act 2
It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's
to keep unmarried as long as he can.
Man and Superman (1903) act 2
Mendoza: I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.
Tanner: I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the
Government and public opinion allow them to do.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he
outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the
slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
In the arts of peace Man is a bungler.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as sea
sickness, and matters just as little.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs
off its womankind.
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of
its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and
the prisoners were left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly
asunder. You can't have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy,
why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Man and Superman (1903) act 3
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it
has been in the house three days?
Man and Superman (1903) act 4
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your hearts desire. The
other is to get it.
Man and Superman (1903) act 4
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only
shifted it to another shoulder.
Man and Superman (1903) "The Revolutionist's Handbook," foreword
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their
tastes may not be the same.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: The Golden Rule"
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: The Golden Rule"
The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy
consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of
idolators. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only
worship the national idols.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Idolatry"
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by
the corrupt few.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Democracy"
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality"
The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's character.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Education"
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Education"
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the
maximum of opportunity.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Marriage"
Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced
by the inferior.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Titles"
When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth while
to keep them.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Servants"
If you strike a child take care that you strike it in anger, even at the
risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should
be forgiven.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: How to Beat Children"
Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Religion"
Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on
rascality.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Virtues and Vice"
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Greatness"
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers
both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Moderation"
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Reason"
The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are
not strong enough to master her.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Reason"
Decency is Indecency's conspiracy of silence.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Decency"
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Fame"
Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Women in the Home"
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings"
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which
forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings"
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings"
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings"
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you
nor allows you to forgive yourself.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings"
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.
Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists: Self-Sacrifice"
There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing
it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does
everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs
you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he
bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles
and cuts off his king's head on republican principles.
Man of Destiny (1898) p. 201
Anybody on for a game of tennis?
Misalliance (1914) p. 25 (perhaps the origin of the phrase "Anyone for
tennis?," said to be typical of drawing-room comedies; cf. Humphrey
Bogart)
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.
Misalliance (1914) p. 85
The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be
good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
Mrs Warren's Profession (1898) act 2
A great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.
Mrs Warren's Profession (1898) act 4 (said of Miss Warren)
[Dancing is] a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
In New Statesman 23 Mar. 1962
Youll never have a quiet world til you knock the patriotism out of the
human race.
O'Flaherty V.C. (1919) p. 178
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is
death.
Overruled (1916) p. 72
There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so
horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But it is in some
respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not
forced to read books written by the warders and the governor...and beaten
or otherwise tormented if you cannot remember their utterly unmemorable
contents.
Parents and Children (1914) "School"
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether
you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
Parents and Children (1914) "Children's Happiness"
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
Parents and Children (1914) "Children's Happiness"
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal
constancy of the women who love me.
The Philanderer (1898) act 2
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898) vol. 2, preface
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their
children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach
himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open
his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.
Pygmalion (1916) preface
Hes a gentleman: look at his boots.
Pygmalion (1916) act 1
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of
articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear
and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious
pigeon.
Pygmalion (1916) act 1
I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady.
Pygmalion (1916) act 2
Pickering: Have you no morals, man?
Doolittle: Can't afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as
poor as me.
Pygmalion (1916) act 2
I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that
means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle-class morality all the
time.
Pygmalion (1916) act 2
My aunt died of influenza: so they said. But it's my belief they done the
old woman in.
Pygmalion (1916) act 3
Gin was mother's milk to her.
Pygmalion (1916) act 3
Freddy: Are you walking across the Park, Miss Doolittle? If so--
Liza: Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi.
Pygmalion (1916) act 3
I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle-class morality.
Pygmalion (1916) act 5
The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
Saint Joan (1924) preface
If ever I utter an oath again may my soul be blasted to eternal damnation!
Saint Joan (1924) sc. 2
A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose
and nature of miracles.... Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith
does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.
Saint Joan (1924) sc. 2
We were not fairly beaten, my lord. No Englishman is ever fairly beaten.
Saint Joan (1924) sc. 4
How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in
terms.
Saint Joan (1924) sc. 4
Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have
no imagination?
Saint Joan (1924) epilogue
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even
Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare
when I measure my mind against his. The intensity of my impatience with
him occasionally reaches such a pitch, that it would positively be
a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him, knowing as I do how
incapable he and his worshippers are of understanding any less obvious
form of indignity.
Saturday Review 26 Sept. 1896 (reviewing a production of Cymbeline)
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet (1911) "Limits to Toleration"
"Do you know what a pessimist is?" "A man who thinks everybody is as nasty
as himself, and hates them for it."
An Unsocial Socialist (1887) ch. 5
We dont bother much about dress and manners in England, because, as a
nation, we dont dress well and weve no manners.
You Never Can Tell (1898) act 1
Well, sir, you never can tell. Thats a principle in life with me, sir, if
youll excuse my having such a thing, sir.
You Never Can Tell (1898) act 2
The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.
You Never Can Tell (1898) act 2
My speciality is being right when other people are wrong.
You Never Can Tell (1898) act 4
The younger generation is knocking at the door, and as I open it there
steps spritely in the incomparable Max.
Saturday Review 21 May 1898 "Valedictory" (on handing over the theatre
review column to Max Beerbohm)
19.54 Sir Hartley Shawcross (Baron Shawcross)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-
"But," said Alice, "the question is whether you can make a word mean
different things." "Not so," said Humpty-Dumpty, "the question is which is
to be the master. That's all." We are the masters at the moment, and not
only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.
Hansard 2 Apr. 1946, col. 1213. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(1979) 135:22
19.55 Patrick Shaw-Stewart
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1888-1917
I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die;
I ask and cannot answer
If otherwise wish I.
Poem (1916) in M. Baring Have You Anything to Declare? (1936) p. 39
He [Shaw-Stewart] once asked me if I knew a certain Duke's eldest son, and
when I said no, and from what I heard I didn't think we should like him if
we did, he answered: "I've yet to meet the Duke I couldn't like."
Edward Marsh A Number of People (1939) ch. 9
We know that the organised workers of the country are our friends. As for
the rest, they don't matter a tinker's cuss.
Speech to Electrical Trades Union conference at Margate, 7 May 1947, in
Manchester Guardian 8 May 1947
19.60 Jean Sibelius
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1865-1957
"Never pay any attention to what critics say," he [Sibelius] proceeded,
and expatiated on this theme. When I ventured to put in the remark that
their articles might sometimes be of great importance, he cut me short.
"Remember," he said, "a statue has never been set up in honour of a
critic!"
In Bengt de T”rne Sibelius: A Close-Up (1937) ch. 2
19.61 Walter Sickert
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1860-1942
Nothing knits man to man, the Manchester School wisely taught, like the
frequent passage from hand to hand of cash.
New Age 28 July 1910 "The Language of Art"
19.62 Maurice Sigler and Al Hoffman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Maurice Sigler 1901-1961
Al Hoffman 1902-1960
Little man, you've had a busy day.
Title of song (1934)
19.63 Alan Sillitoe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
The loneliness of the long-distance runner.
Title of novel (1959)
19.64 Frank Silver and Irving Cohn
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Frank Silver 1892-1960
Irving Cohn 1898-1961
Yes! we have no bananas,
We have no bananas today.
Yes! We Have No Bananas (1923 song)
19.65 Georges Simenon
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1903-1989
J'ai eu 10,000 femmes depuis l'ѓge de 13 ans et demi. Ce n'‚tait pas du
tout un vice. Je n'ai aucun vice sexuel, mais j'avais besoin de
communiquer.
I have made love to 10,000 women since I was 13-1/2. It wasn't in any way
vice. I've no sexual vices. But I needed to communicate.
Interview with Federico Fellini in L'Express 21 Feb. 1977
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
Interview in Paris Review Summer 1955
19.66 James Simmons
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1933-
For every year of life we light
A candle on your cake
To mark the simple sort of progress
Anyone can make,
And then, to test your nerve or give
A proper view of death,
You're asked to blow each light, each year,
Out with your own breath.
In the Wilderness and Other Poems (1969) "A Birthday Poem"
19.67 Paul Simon
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1942-
And here's to you, Mrs Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you please, Mrs Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Mrs Robinson (1968 song; used in the film The Graduate)
19.68 Harold Simpson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Down in the forest something stirred:
It was only the note of a bird.
Down in the Forest (1906 song; music by Landon Ronald)
19.69 Kirke Simpson
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[Warren] Harding of Ohio was chosen by a group of men in a smoke-filled
room early today as Republican candidate for President.
News report, 12 June 1920
19.70 N. F. Simpson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1919-
Knocked down a doctor? With an ambulance? How could she? It's a
contradiction in terms.
One Way Pendulum (1960) act 1
19.71 Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Noble Sissle 1889-1975
Eubie Blake 1883-1983
I'm just wild about Harry.
Title of song (1921)
19.72 C. H. Sisson
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1914-
Here lies a civil servant. He was civil
To everyone, and servant to the devil.
In The London Zoo (1961) p. 29
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again.
Bucolic Comedies (1923) "Aubade"
The fire was furry as a bear.
Bucolic Comedies (1923) "Fa‡ade: Dark Song"
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty. But I am too busy
thinking about myself.
In Observer 30 Apr. 1950
Virginia Woolf, I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her
writing. I considered her "a beautiful little knitter."
Letter to Geoffrey Singleton, 11 July 1955, in John Lehmann and Derek
Palmer (eds.) Selected Letters (1970)
Daisy and Lily,
Lazy and silly,
Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea--
Talking once more 'neath a swan-bosomed tree.
Song of the Cold (1948) "Waltz"
Still falls the Rain--
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss--
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
Street Songs (1942) "The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn"
Mr [Percy Wyndham] Lewis's pictures appeared, as a very great painter said
to me, to have been painted by a mailed fist in a cotton glove.
Taken Care Of (1965) ch. 11
19.74 Sir Osbert Sitwell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1969
The British Bourgeoise
Is not born,
And does not die,
But, if it is ill,
It has a frightened look in its eyes.
At the House of Mrs Kinfoot (1921) p. 8
In reality, killing time
Is only the name for another of the multifarious ways
By which Time kills us.
Poems about People (1958) "Milordo Inglese"
Educ: during the holidays from Eton.
Entry in Who's Who (1929)
Well, it only proves what they always say--give the public something they
want to see, and they'll come out for it.
Comment on crowds attending the funeral of Harry Cohn on 2 Mar. 1958, in
Bob Thomas King Cohn (1967) "Foreground"
19.76 B. F. Skinner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1904-1990
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
New Scientist 21 May 1964
19.77 Elizabeth Smart
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1913-1986
By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept.
Title of book (1945). Cf. Psalm 137:1
19.78 Alfred Emanuel Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1873-1944
No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the
municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard
Christmas.
Comment on the New Deal, in New Outlook Dec. 1933
The crowning climax to the whole situation is the undisputed fact that
William Randolph Hearst gave him [Ogden Mills] the kiss of death.
Comment on Hearst's support for Smith's unsuccessful opponent for governor
of New York State in New York Times 25 Oct. 1926
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
Speech in Albany, 27 June 1933, in New York Times 28 June 1933
19.79 Sir Cyril Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1928-
This place is the longest running farce in the West End.
Comment to journalists on the House of Commons, July 1973, in Big Cyril
(1977) ch. 8
19.80 Dodie Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1990
And so I give you our toast. From that young man upstairs who has had the
impudence to make me a great-uncle, to Mother and Father on their Golden
Wedding; through four generations of us, and to those who have gone, and
those who are to come. To the family--that dear octopus from whose
tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite
wish to.
Dear Octopus (1938) p. 120
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
I Capture the Castle (1949) pt. 1, ch. 3
19.81 Edgar Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1857-1938
You may tempt the upper classes
With your villainous demi-tasses,
But; Heaven will protect a working-girl!
Heaven Will Protect the Working-Girl (1909 song; music by A. Baldwin
Sloane)
19.82 F. E. Smith (Earl of Birkenhead)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1872-1930
We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit
the Earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this
aphorism in the records of Somerset House.
Contemporary Personalities (1924) "Marquess Curzon"
Judge Willis...after a long wrangle with F. E. Smith, whom by this time he
must have come to loathe, upon a point of procedure asked plaintively:
"What do you suppose I am on the Bench for, Mr Smith?" "It is not for me,
Your Honour, to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence."
In Second Earl of Birkenhead F. E. The Life of F. E. Smith First Earl of
Birkenhead (1959 ed.) ch. 9
Judge: I have read your case, Mr Smith, and I am no wiser now than
I was when I started.
Smith: Possibly not, My Lord, but far better informed.
In Second Earl of Birkenhead F. E. The Life of F. E. Smith First Earl of
Birkenhead (1959 ed.) ch. 9
Judge willis: You are extremely offensive, young man.
F. e. smith: As a matter of fact, we both are, and the only difference
between us is that I am trying to be, and you can't help it.
In Second Earl of Birkenhead Frederick Edwin Earl of Birkenhead (1933)
vol. 1, ch. 9
Mr justice darling: And who is George Robey?
F. e. smith: Mr George Robey is the Darling of the music halls, m'lud.
In A. E. Wilson The Prime Minister of Mirth (1956) ch. 1
The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout
hearts and sharp swords.
Rectorial Address, Glasgow University, 7 Nov. 1923, in The Times 8 Nov.
1923
19.83 Ian Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1919-
Let me say again, I don't believe in black majority rule in Rhodesia--not
in a thousand years. I believe in blacks and whites working together.
Broadcast speech, 20 Mar. 1976, in Sunday Times 21 Mar. 1976
19.84 Logan Pearsall Smith
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1946
Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar
taste.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and,
after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"
How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any
danger of their coming true!
Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"
There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no
avail.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"
An improper mind is a perpetual feast.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Life and Human Nature"
There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can
possibly imagine.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Age and Death"
What music is more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you
can't hear what they say?
Afterthoughts (1931) "Age and Death"
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older
people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Age and Death"
I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts
of theirs at all amusing.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Age and Death"
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is
no God.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the
proceeds.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"
All Reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just
as big as they can pay for.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"
When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, Idealists are very apt
to walk straight into the gutter.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"
Married women are kept women, and they are beginning to find it out.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Other People"
You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate.
Afterthoughts (1931) "In the World"
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich
people.
Afterthoughts (1931) "In the World"
To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the
rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep
absolutely sober.
Afterthoughts (1931) "In the World"
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Art and Letters"
A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Art and Letters"
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Myself"
Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy
it.
Afterthoughts (1931) "Myself"
What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
All Trivia (1933) "Afterthoughts" pt. 5
Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half-jokingly if he had
discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning, at
least for me, there is one thing that matters--to set a chime of words
tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."
Cyril Connolly "Logan Pearsall Smith," obituary notice in New Statesman
9 Mar. 1946
19.85 Stevie Smith (Florence Margaret Smith)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1971
This Englishwoman is so refined
She has no bosom and no behind.
A Good Time was had by All (1937) "This Englishwoman"
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Not Waving but Drowning (1957) title poem
People who are always praising the past
And especially the times of faith as best
Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages
And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.
Not Waving but Drowning (1957) "The Past"
There you are you see, quite simple. If you cannot have your dear husband
for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a crosspatch, for
a sofa, chair or a hot-water bottle, one can use him as a Cross to be
Borne.
Novel on Yellow Page (1936) p. 24
Oh I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good.
Scorpion and Other Poems (1972) "The Galloping Cat"
I long for the Person from Porlock
To bring my thoughts to an end,
I am growing impatient to see him
I think of him as a friend.
Selected Poems (1962) "Thoughts about the 'Person from Porlock'"
Private Means is dead
God rest his soul, officers and fellow-rankers said.
Selected Poems (1962) "Private Means is Dead"
Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
When I am happy I live and despise writing
For my Muse this cannot but be dispiriting.
Selected Poems (1964) "My Muse"
19.86 John Snagge
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1904-
His [Snagge's] famous gaffe [in a commentary on the Boat Race] to the
effect that he couldn't see who was in the lead but it was either Oxford
or Cambridge he had no recollection of until he heard a recording
afterwards.
C. Dodd Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race (1983) ch. 14
19.87 C. P. Snow (Baron Snow of Leicester)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1905-1980
The official world, the corridors of power, the dilemmas of conscience and
egotism--she disliked them all.
Homecomings (1956) ch. 22
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is
increasingly being split into two polar groups... Literary intellectuals
at one pole--at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the
physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959 Rede Lecture) p. 3
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the
standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who
have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the
illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have
asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative.
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959 Rede Lecture) p. 14
19.88 Philip Snowden (Viscount Snowden)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1864-1937
It would be desirable if every Government, when it comes to power, should
have its old speeches burnt.
In C. E. Bechofer Roberts ("Ephesian") Philip Snowden (1929) ch. 12
I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party: It is the
most fantastic and impracticable programme ever put before the electors.
All the derelict industries are to be taken over by the State, and the
taxpayer is to shoulder the losses. The banks and financial houses are to
be placed under national ownership and control, which means, I suppose,
that they are to be run by a joint committee of the Labour Party and the
Trades Union Council. Your investments are to be ordered by some board,
and your foreign investments are to be mobilized to finance this madcap
policy. This is not Socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad.
BBC radio election broadcast, 17 Oct. 1931, in The Times 19 Oct. 1931
19.89 Alexander Solzhenitsyn
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-
Meanwhile no such thing as INTERNAL AFFAIRS remains on our crowded Earth.
Mankind's salvation lies exclusively in everyone's making everything his
business, in the people of the East being anything but indifferent to what
is thought in the West, and in the people of the West being anything but
indifferent to what happens in the East.
Nobel Prize Lecture, 1970, in John B. Dunlop, Richard Haugh and Alexis
Klimoff (eds.) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary
Materials (1974) p. 574
If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins
to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand
than Martians.
(Cancer Ward, 1968) pt. 2, ch. 32
You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away
from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in
your power--he's free again.
(The First Circle, 1968) ch. 17
Yes, we are still the prisoners of communism, and yet, for us in Russia,
communism is a dead dog, while for many people in the West it is still
living lion.
Broadcast on BBC Russian Service, in Listener 15 Feb. 1979
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar
of the State.
1974 interview, printed in appendix to (The Oak and the Calf, 1975)
Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.
Reply to accusation of ballot-rigging, in Guardian 17 June 1977
19.91 Stephen Sondheim
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1930-
Everything's coming up roses.
Title of song (1959; music by Jule Styne)
Send in the clowns.
Title of song (1973)
19.92 Susan Sontag
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1933-
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Evergreen Review Dec. 1964
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art
to its content, and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art.
Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.
Evergreen Review Dec. 1964
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and
eventually in one's own.
New York Review of Books 18 Apr. 1974
A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an
interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly
stencilled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.
New York Review of Books 23 June 1977
Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone
who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the
kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good
passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to
identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
New York Review of Books 26 Jan. 1978
The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare,
parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of
women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballet et al, don't redeem what this
particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the
cancer of human history, it is the white race, and it alone--its
ideologies and inventions--which eradicates autonomous civilizations
wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet,
which now threatens the very existence of life itself.
Partisan Review Winter 1967, p. 57
19.93 Donald Soper (Baron Soper)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1903-
The quality of debate [in the House of Lords] is pretty high--and it is,
I think, good evidence of life after death.
Radio interview, in Listener 17 Aug. 1978
19.94 Charles Hamilton Sorley
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-1915
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Marlborough and Other Poems (1916) "A Sonnet"
19.95 Henry D. Spalding
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
d. 1990
I like Ike.
US button badge first used in 1947 when General Eisenhower was seen as
a potential presidential nominee, in New Republic 27 Oct. 1947
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
The Comforters (1957) ch. 6
"I am putting old heads on your young shoulders," Miss Brodie had told
them at that time, "and all my pupils are the crЉme de la crЉme."
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) ch. 1
Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) ch. 1
One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on
the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may
occur. You must live it to the full.
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) ch. 1
19.97 John Sparrow
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-
That indefatigable and unsavoury engine of pollution, the dog.
Letter in The Times 30 Sept. 1975
Alas, for our towns and cities. Monstrous carbuncles of concrete have
erupted in gentle Georgian Squares.
The Spencers on Spas (1983) p. 14. Cf. Prince Charles 50:2
19.99 Sir Stanley Spencer
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1891-1959
Painting is saying "Ta" to God.
In letter from Spencer's daughter Shirin, Observer 7 Feb. 1988
19.100 Stephen Spender
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1909-
Never being, but always at the edge of Being.
Poems (1933) no. 10
My parents kept me from children who were rough
And who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.
Poems (1933) no. 12
What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening the will
Leaking the brightness away.
Poems (1933) no. 13
Who live under the shadow of a war,
What can I do that matters?
Poems (1933) no. 17
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
Poems (1933) no. 23 "I think continually of those who were truly great"
After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.
Poems (1933) no. 26 "The Express"
Now over these small hills they have built the concrete
That trails black wire:
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret.
Poems (1933) no. 28 "The Pylons"
Consider: only one bullet in ten thousand kills a man.
Ask: was so much expenditure justified
On the death of one so young and so silly
Stretched under the olive trees, Oh, world, Oh, death?
Stephen Spender and John Lehmann (eds.) Poems for Spain (1939) "Regum
Ultimo Ratio"
...their collected
Hearts wound up with love, like little watch springs.
Still Centre (1939) "The Past Values"
People sometimes divide others into those you laugh at and those you laugh
with. The young Auden was someone you could laugh-at-with.
W. H. Auden (address delivered at Auden's memorial service at Christ
Church Cathedral, Oxford, 27 Oct. 1973)
Der Sozialismus ist nichts als der Kapitalismus der Unterklasse.
Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.
Jahre der Entscheidung (The Hour of Decision, 1933) pt. 1
19.102 Steven Spielberg
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1947-
Close encounters of the third kind.
Title of film (1977)
19.103 Dr Benjamin Spock
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1903-
You know more than you think you do.
Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) [later Baby and Child
Care ], opening words
To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation.
Dr Spock on Vietnam (1968) ch. 7
19.104 William Archibald Spooner
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1844-1930
Mr Spooner has a habit of transferring his syllables, so that it is no
unusual experience for the members of New College to hear their late Dean
give out in chapel a well-known sentence in the unintelligible guise of
"Kinkering Kongs their tykles tate."
Echo 4 May 1892
A famous New College personality...was Warden Spooner.... "You have tasted
your worm," he is reputed to have said to an undergraduate, "you have
hissed my mystery lectures, and you must leave by the first town drain."
He was also responsible for proposing a toast to "our queer old dean."
Oxford University What's What (1948) p. 8 (William Hayter in Spooner
(1977) ch. 6 maintains these sayings are apocryphal)
Mr Huxley assures me that it's no farther from the north coast of
Spitzbergen to the North Pole than it is from Land's End to John of Gaunt.
Julian Huxley in SEAC (Calcutta) 27 Feb. 1944
You will find as you grow older that the weight of rages will press harder
and harder upon the employer.
In William Hayter Spooner (1977) ch. 6
Poor soul, very sad; her late husband, you know, a very sad death--eaten
by missionaries--poor soul!
In William Hayter Spooner (1977) ch. 6
19.105 Sir Cecil Spring Rice
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1918
I vow to thee, my country--all earthly things above--
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love,
The love that asks no question: the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best:
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
Poems (1920) "I Vow to Thee, My Country"
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago--
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know.
Poems (1920) "I Vow to Thee, My Country"
And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are Peace.
Poems (1920) "I Vow to Thee, My Country"
I am the Dean of Christ Church, Sir:
There's my wife; look well at her.
She's the Broad and I'm the High;
We are the University.
The Masque of Balliol in W. G. Hiscock (ed.) The Balliol Rhymes (1939)
p. 29
19.106 Bruce Springsteen
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1949-
We gotta get out while we're young,
'Cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.
Born to Run (1975 song)
19.107 Sir J. C. Squire
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1884-1958
But I'm not so think as you drunk I am.
M. Baring et al. One Hundred and One Ballades (1931 "Ballade of Soporific
Absorption"
It did not last: the Devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
Poems (1926) "In continuation of Pope on Newton." Cf. Oxford Dictionary
of Quotations (1979) 378:7
19.108 Joseph Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1879-1953
The State is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class, used to break
the resistance of the adversaries of that class.
Foundations of Leninism (1924) section 4/6
Mr Churchill, Mr Prime Minister, how many divisions did you say the Pope
had?
At the Potsdam Conference, reported by Harry S. Truman in speech to
American Association for the Advancement of Science, in New York Times
14 Sept. 1948, p. 24 (reporting Stalin's reaction to Churchill's
statement that the Pope would not like the Communists to take over the
Catholic part of Poland)
First of all there is the question: Can Socialism possibly be established
in one country alone by that country's unaided strength? The question
must be answered in the affirmative.
Problems of Leninism (1926) ch. 6
19.109 Charles E. Stanton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1933
Lafayette, nous voila!
Lafayette, we are here.
At the tomb of Lafayette in Paris, 4 July 1917, in New York Tribune
6 Sept. 1917
19.110 Frank L. Stanton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1857-1927
Sweetes' li'l' feller,
Everybody knows;
Dunno what to call him,
But he's mighty lak' a rose!
Mighty Lak' a Rose (1901 song; music by Ethelbert Nevin)
19.111 Dame Freya Stark
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-
The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can
always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.
The Valleys of the Assassins (1934) ch. 2
Unhurt people are not much good in the world.
Letter, 18 June 1943, in Joanna Richardson Enid Starkie (1973) pt. 6,
ch. 18
19.113 Christina Stead
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1902-1983
If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among
themselves there wouldn't be enough to go round.
House of All Nations (1938) "Credo"
A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.
House of All Nations (1938) "Credo"
19.114 Sir David Steel
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1938-
I have the good fortune to be the first Liberal leader for over half
a century who is able to say to you at the end of our annual assembly: go
back to your constituencies and prepare for government.
Speech at Liberal Party Assembly, Llandudno, 18 Sept. 1981, in The Times
19 Sept. 1981
19.115 Lincoln Steffens
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1936
I have seen the future; and it works.
Letter to Marie Howe, 3 Apr. 1919, in Letters (1938) vol. 1, p. 463
(describing a visit to the Soviet Union in 1919; cf. Steffens's
Autobiography (1931) ch. 18: "So you've been over into Russia?" said
Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, "I have been over into the
future, and it works")
Hemingway...brought the manuscript he intended sending to America. He
handed it to Gertrude Stein. He had added to his stories a little story of
meditations and in these he said that The Enormous Room was the greatest
book he had ever read. It was then that Gertrude Stein said, Hemingway,
remarks are not literature.
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) ch. 7
Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn't learned much.
Said of Ernest Hemingway in James R. Mellow Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein
and Company (1974) ch. 16
Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all
considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very
frightening.
Everybody's Autobiography (1937) ch. 2
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much
doing nothing, really doing nothing.
Everybody's Autobiography (1937) ch. 2
What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have
come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not
there, there is no there there.
Everybody's Autobiography (1937) ch. 4
Ezra Pound failed to impress her [Stein].... She said he was a village
explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.
Janet Hobhouse Everyone who was Anybody (1975) ch. 6
You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to
take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.
Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings (1971) "Q.E.D." (1903) bk. 1
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) act 3, sc. 2
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where
anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.
The Geographical History of America (1936)
Just before she [Stein] died she asked, "What is the answer?" No answer
came. She laughed and said, "In that case what is the question?" Then she
died.
Donald Sutherland Gertrude Stein, A Biography of her Work (1951) ch. 6
Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not
those that are and were fighting with you. Disillusionment in living is
the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are fighting for
you. Complete disillusionment is when you realise that no one can for they
can't change.
Making of Americans (1934) ch. 5
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose.
Sacred Emily (1913) p. 187
You are all a lost generation.
In Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) epigraph (Gertrude Stein
heard the phrase "a lost generation" (une g‚n‚ration perdue) from a French
garage-owner: see James R. Mellow Charmed Circle (1974) ch. 10)
19.117 John Steinbeck
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1902-1968
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows
beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his
accomplishments.
Grapes of Wrath (1939) ch. 14
I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.
Grapes of Wrath (1939) ch. 18
Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty
son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's
the way they say it.
Grapes of Wrath (1939) ch. 18
Now, we are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
Ms July/Aug. 1982
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
Attributed
19.119 James Stephens
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1882-1950
Women are stronger than men--they do not die of wisdom.
They are better than men because they do not seek wisdom.
They are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
The Crock of Gold (1912) bk. 1, ch. 2
Finality is death. Perfection is finality.
Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it.
The Crock of Gold (1912) bk. 1, ch. 4
I hear a sudden cry of pain!
There is a rabbit in a snare:
Now I hear the cry again,
But I cannot tell from where....
Little one! Oh, little one!
I am searching everywhere.
Songs from the City (1915) "The Snare"
19.120 Andrew B. Sterling
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1874-1955
Wait till the sun shines, Nellie,
When the clouds go drifting by.
Wait till the Sun Shines, Nellie (1905 song; music by Harry von Tilzer)
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Harmonium (1923) "A High-Toned old Christian Woman"
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Harmonium (1923) "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
Harmonium (1923) "Sunday Morning, I"
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.
Harmonium (1923) "Peter Quince at the Clavier" pt. 1
Beauty is momentary in the mind--
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
Harmonium (1923) "Peter Quince at the Clavier" pt. 4
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Harmonium (1923) "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937) title poem
They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.
We shall return at twilight from the lecture
Pleased that the irrational is rational.
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942) "It must give Pleasure"
The poet is the priest of the invisible.
Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"
I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is, if he doesn't inhale.
TV broadcast, 30 Mar. 1952, in N. F. Busch Adlai E. Stevenson (1952) ch. 5
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican
friends...that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will
stop telling the truth about them.
Speech during 1952 Presidential Campaign, in J. B. Martin Adlai Stevenson
and Illinois (1976) ch. 8
We must be patient--making peace is harder than making war.
Speech to Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 21 Mar. 1946, in Chicago
Daily News 22 Mar. 1946
In America any boy may become President and I suppose it's just one of the
risks he takes!
Speech in Indianapolis, 26 Sept. 1952, in Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai
E. Stevenson; 1952 (1953) p. 174
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be
unpopular.
Speech in Detroit, 7 Oct. 1952, in Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E.
Stevenson; 1952 (1953) p. 218
We hear the Secretary of State [John Foster Dulles] boasting of his
brinkmanship--the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.
Speech in Hartford, Connecticut, 25 Feb. 1956, in New York Times 26 Feb.
1956, p. 64
She [Eleanor Roosevelt] would rather light a candle than curse the
darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.
Comment on learning of Mrs Roosevelt's death, in New York Times 8 Nov.
1962
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House.
Speech in Washington, 13 Dec. 1952 (after his defeat in the Presidential
election), in Alden Whitman Portrait: Adlai E. Stevenson (1965) ch. 1
Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them
the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the
eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're
attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure
triumph over the great enemies of man--war, poverty and tyranny--and the
assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of
each.
Speech of Acceptance at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago,
Illinois, 26 July 1952, in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952) p. 20
A hungry man is not a free man.
Speech at Kasson, Minnesota, 6 Sept. 1952, in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson
(1952) "Farm Policy"
There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.
Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, 18 Sept. 1952, in Speeches of Adlai
Stevenson (1952) "The Atomic Future"
It reminds me of the small boy who jumbled his biblical quotations and
said: "A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in
trouble."
In Bill Adler The Stevenson Wit (1966) p. 84 (cf. Proverbs 12:22, Psalms
46:1)
19.123 Anne Stevenson
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1933-
Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.
minute by Glass Minute (1982) "Green Mountain, Black Mountain"
A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies-BergЉre and looks at the
audience.
In Observer 15 Oct. 1961
19.126 Tom Stoppard
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1937-
It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
Jumpers (1972) act 1
My problem is that I am not frightfully interested in anything, except
myself. And of all forms of fiction autobiography is the most gratuitous.
Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966) pt. 2
The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to
subscribe--responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch
throughout the ages.
Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966) pt. 6. Cf. Rudyard Kipling
A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and
corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts.
Otherwise he's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks
that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has
arrived to cover it.
Night and Day (1978) act 1
Wagner: You don't care much for the media, do you, Ruth?
Ruth: The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
Carson: Ruth has mixed feelings about reporters.
Night and Day (1978) act 1
Milne: No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press
everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.
Ruth: I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't
stand.
Night and Day (1978) act 1
We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of
integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1
Guildenstern: Well then--one of the Greeks, perhaps? You're familiar
with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?
Matri, patri, sorori, uxori and it goes without saying--suicidal--hm?
Maidens aspiring to godheads--
Rosencrantz: And vice versa.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1
I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and
I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and
I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but
I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood.
Blood is compulsory--they're all blood, you see.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1
To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come
back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother
popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal
and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this
extraordinary manner?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1
We're actors--we're the opposite of people. Think, in your head, now,
think of the most...private...secret...intimate thing you have ever done
secure in the knowledge of its privacy.... Are you thinking of it?...
Well, I saw you do it!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2
Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2. Cf. Oxford Dictionary
of Quotations (1979) 573:3
Life is a gamble at terrible odds--if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 3
I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of
its passengers to shove it.
Times Literary Supplement 3 June 1977
War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but
they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.
Travesties (1975) act 1
[Samuel] Johnson's aesthetic judgements are almost invariably subtle, or
solid, or bold; they have always some good quality to recommend
them--except one: they are never right.
Books and Characters (1922) "Lives of the Poets"
The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much
about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the
historian--ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and
omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.
Eminent Victorians (1918) preface
The time was out of joint, and he [Hurrell Froude] was only too delighted
to have been born to set it right.
Eminent Victorians (1918) "Cardinal Manning" pt. 2. Cf. Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 524:4
Miss Nightingale, however, with all her experience of public life, never
stopped to consider the question whether God might not be a Limited
Monarchy. Yet her conception of God was certainly not orthodox. She felt
towards Him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary engineer;
and in some of her speculations she seems hardly to distinguish between
the Deity and the Drains.
Eminent Victorians (1918) "Florence Nightingale" pt. 4
His legs, perhaps, were shorter than they should have been.
Eminent Victorians (1918) "Dr Arnold"
Asked by the chairman [of a military tribunal] the usual question: "I
understand, Mr Strachey, that you have a conscientious objection to war?"
he replied (in his curious falsetto voice), "Oh no, not at all, only to
this war." Better than this was his reply to the chairman's other stock
question, which had previously never failed to embarrass the claimant.
"Tell me, Mr Strachey, what would you do if you saw a German soldier
trying to violate your sister?" With an air of noble virtue: "I would try
to get between them."
Robert Graves Good-bye to All That (1929) ch. 23
Discretion is not the better part of biography.
In Michael Holroyd Lytton Strachey vol. 1 (1967) preface
He [Max Beerbohm] has the most remarkable and seductive genius--and
I should say about the smallest in the world.
Letter to Clive Bell, 4 Dec. 1917, in Michael Holroyd Lytton Strachey
vol. 2 (1968) pt. 1, ch. 5
"If this is dying," he remarked quietly, just before falling into
unconsciousness, "then I don't think much of it."
Michael Holroyd Lytton Strachey vol. 2, (1968) pt. 2, ch. 6
19.128 Igor Stravinsky
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1882-1971
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at
all...music expresses itself.
In Esquire Dec. 1972
My music is best understood by children and animals.
In Observer 8 Oct. 1961
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
In Peter Yates Twentieth Century Music (1967) pt. 1, ch. 8. Cf. T. S.
Eliot 76:8, Lionel Trilling 218:1
People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the
library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.
No Mean City (1944) ch. 2
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
No Mean City (1944) ch. 38
19.130 G. A. Studdert Kennedy
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1883-1929
Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain,
Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,
Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,
Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,
Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears,
Waste of youth's most precious years,
Waste of ways the saints have trod,
Waste of Glory, waste of God,
War!
More Rough Rhymes of a Padre by "Woodbine Willie" (1919) "Waste"
When Jesus came to Golgotha they hanged Him on a tree,
They drave great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham they simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die.
For men had grown more tender and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
Peace Rhymes of a Padre (1921) "Indifference"
19.131 Terry Sullivan
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She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore,
The shells she sells are sea-shells, I'm sure,
For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore,
Then I'm sure she sells sea-shore shells.
She Sells Sea-Shells (1908 song; music by Harry Gifford)
19.132 Arthur Hays Sulzberger
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1891-
We [journalists] tell the public which way the cat is jumping. The public
will take care of the cat.
Time 8 May 1950
The housewife is the Cinderella of the affluent state.... She is wholly
dependent on the whim of an individual to give her money for the
essentials of life. If she complains she is a nagger--for nagging is the
repetition of unpalatable truths.
Speech to Married Women's Association, House of Commons, 14 July 1960, in
The Times 15 July 1960
Perhaps it was about now [circa.1902] that he [Swaffer] began to formulate
a dictum which, though not always attributed to him, has often been quoted
(among others, by witnesses before the first Royal Commssion on the
Press): "Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print such of
the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to."
Tom Driberg Swaff (1974) ch. 2
19.136 Herbert Bayard Swope
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1882-1958
The First Duty of a newspaper is to be Accurate. If it is Accurate, it
follows that it is Fair.
Letter to New York Herald Tribune 16 Mar. 1958
He [Swope] enunciated no rules for success, but offered a sure formula for
failure: Just try to please everyone.
In E. J. Kahn Jr. World of Swope (1965) p. 7 See also Bernard Baruch
(2.27)
19.137 Eric Sykes and Max Bygraves
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1922-
Eric Sykes had this quick ear and could tell by any inflection I put into
a line how to make it a catch phrase--at one time I had more catch phrases
than I could handle. I had the whole country saying things like "I've
arrived and to prove it I'm here!" "A good idea--son" "Bighead!" "Dollar
lolly."
Max Bygraves I Wanna Tell You a Story! (1976) p. 96 (describing
catch-phrases on Educating Archie, 1950-3 BBC radio comedy series)
19.138 John Millington Synge
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1871-1909
"A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drownded," he said "for
he will be going out on a day he shouldn't. But we do be afraid of the
sea, and we do only be drownded now and again."
Aran Islands (1907) pt. 2
"A translation is no translation," he said, "unless it will give you the
music of a poem along with the words of it."
Aran Islands (1907) pt. 3
When I was writing "The Shadow of the Glen," some years ago, I got more
aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the
old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being
said by the servant girls in the kitchen.
Playboy of the Western World (1907) preface
Oh my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the
Western World.
Playboy of the Western World (1907) act 3 (last lines)
19.139 Thomas Szasz
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1920-
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to
be right but also to be wrong.
The Second Sin (1973) "Childhood"
Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth
century, it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.
The Second Sin (1973) "Sex"
Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein
perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we
make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women
together.
The Second Sin (1973) "Sex"
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the
living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by
children to adults.
The Second Sin (1973) "Emotions"
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the na‹ve forgive and forget; the
wise forgive but do not forget.
The Second Sin (1973) "Personal Conduct"
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
The Second Sin (1973) "Social Relations"
If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have
schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God
talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
The Second Sin (1973) "Schizophrenia"
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for
medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake
medicine for magic.
The Second Sin (1973) "Science and Scientism"
19.140 George Szell
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1897-1970
Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the
orchestra--not choreography to the audience.
Newsweek 28 Jan. 1963
19.141 Albert von Szent-Gy”rgyi
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1893-1986
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought.
In Irving Good (ed.) The Scientist Speculates (1962) p. 15
20.0 T
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20.1 Sir Rabindranath Tagore
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1861-1941
Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand
With a grip that kills it.
Fireflies (1928) p. 29
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.
Title of hymn (1921), in CSSM Choruses No. 1
20.3 S. G. Tallentyre (E. Beatrice Hall)
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1868-
"On the Mind" [De l'Esprit] became not the success of the season, but one
of the most famous books of the century. The men who had hated it, and had
not particularly loved Helv‚tius, flocked round him now. Voltaire forgave
him all injuries, intentional or unintentional.... "I disapprove of what
you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," was his
attitude now.
The Friends of Voltaire (1906) ch. 7 (often attributed to Voltaire but
not found in his works)
There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one
of them is that he has taken to drink.
Penrod (1914) ch. 10
20.5 A. J. P. Taylor
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1906-1990
He [Lord Northcliffe] aspired to power instead of influence, and as
a result forfeited both.
English History, 1914-1945 (1965) ch. 1
Communism continued to haunt Europe as a spectre--a name men gave to their
own fears and blunders. But the crusade against Communism was even more
imaginary than the spectre of Communism.
Origins of the Second World War (1962) ch. 2
A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do
well for his clients.
Origins of the Second World War (1962) ch. 7
20.6 Bert Leston Taylor
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1866-1901
A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
The So-Called Human Race (1922) p. 163
20.7 Norman Tebbit
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1931-
We cannot ignore the price that unemployment today is exacting from the
failures of the past. I have known about these things. I grew up in the
Thirties with our unemployed father. He did not riot, he got on his bike
and looked for work.
Speech at Conservative Party Conference, 15 Oct. 1981, in Daily Telegraph
16 Oct. 1981
20.8 Archbishop William Temple
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1881-1944
In place of the conception of the power-state we are led to that of the
welfare-state.
Citizen and Churchman (1941) ch. 2
It is a mistake to suppose that God is only, or even chiefly, concerned
with religion.
In R. V. C. Bodley In Search of Serenity (1955) ch. 12
Christianity is the most materialistic of all great religions.
Readings in St John's Gospel vol. 1 (1939) introduction
20.9 A. S. J. Tessimond
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1902-1962
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves.
Cats (1934) p. 20
20.10 Margaret Thatcher
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1925-
We have to get our production and our earnings into balance. There's no
easy popularity in what we are proposing, but it is fundamentally sound.
Yet I believe people accept there is no real alternative.
Speech at Conservative Women's Conference, 21 May 1980, in Daily Telegraph
22 May 1980
A triumphant Prime Minister declared "Rejoice, rejoice" last night....
"Let us congratulate our armed forces and the Marines," she added.
On recapture of South Georgia, 25 Apr. 1982, Daily Telegraph 26 Apr. 1982
In church on Sunday morning--it was a lovely morning and we haven't had
many lovely days--the sun was coming through a stained glass window and
falling on some flowers, falling right across the church. It just occurred
to me that this was the day I was meant not to see. Then all of a sudden
I thought, "there are some of my dearest friends who are not seeing this
day."
Television interview, 15 Oct. 1984, after the Brighton bombing, in Daily
Telegraph 16 Oct. 1984
We're going to be rather lucky to be living at a time when you get the
turn of the thousand years and we really ought to set Britain's course for
the next century as well as this.... Yes, I hope to go on and on.
Television interview, 11 May 1987, in Independent 12 May 1987
I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.
In Observer 27 Jan. 1980
I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
In Observer 4 Apr. 1989
Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you tonight in my red chiffon evening
gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved...the Iron Lady of
the Western World! Me? A cold war warrior? Well, yes--if that is how they
wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way
of life.
Speech at Finchley, 31 Jan. 1976, in Sunday Times 1 Feb. 1976
I was asked whether I was trying to restore Victorian values. I said
straight out I was. And I am.
Speech to British Jewish Community, 21 July 1983, in M. Mc Fadyean & M.
Renn Thatcher's Reign (1984) p. 114
We shall not be diverted from our course. To those waiting with bated
breath for that favourite media catch-phrase, the U-turn, I have only this
to say. "You turn if you want; the lady's not for turning."
Speech at Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, 10 Oct. 1980, in The
Times 11 Oct. 1980
Let me make one thing absolutely clear. The National Health Service is
safe with us.
Speech at Conservative party Conference, 8 Oct. 1982, in The Times 9 Oct.
1982
The Prime Minister [Mrs Thatcher] said yesterday that she liked Mr
Gorbachev--"we can do business together"--and that she was cautiously
optimistic for detente and world peace in the new year.
The Times 18 Dec. 1984
We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the
oxygen of publicity on which they depend.
Speech to American Bar Association in London, 15 July 1985, in The Times
16 July 1985
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions.
He had money as well.
Television interview, 6 Jan. 1986, in The Times 12 Jan. 1986
Mrs Margaret Thatcher informed the world with regal panache yesterday that
her daughter-in-law had given birth to a son. "We have become a
grandmother," the Prime Minister said.
The Times 4 Mar. 1989
There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and
there are families.
Woman's Own 31 Oct. 1987
20.11 Sam Theard and Fleecie Moore
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Let the good times roll.
Title of song (1946)
20.12 Diane Thomas
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Romancing the stone.
Title of film (1984)
20.13 Dylan Thomas
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1914-1953
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town
corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices
I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether
it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it
snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954) p. 5
Years and years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in
Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the
harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves
that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours, and we
chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before
the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we
rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.
A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954) p. 11
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Collected poems (1952) "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"
After the first death, there is no other.
Deaths and Entrances (1946) "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of
a Child in London"
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore.
The morning beckon.
Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Poem in October"
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall vales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Poem in October"
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.
Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Fern Hill"
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
Deaths and Entrances (1946) "Fern Hill"
The land of my fathers [Wales]. My fathers can have it.
In Adam Dec. 1953
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
18 Poems (1934) "The Force that through the Green Fuse drives the Flower"
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides.
18 Poems (1934) "Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines"
Dylan talked copiously, then stopped. "Somebody's boring me," he said, "I
think it's me."
Rayner Heppenstall Four Absentees (1960) ch. 16
Dylan himself once defined an alcoholic as a man you don't like who drinks
as much as you do.
Constantine Fitzgibbon Life of Dylan Thomas (1965) ch. 6
Portrait of the artist as a young dog.
Title of book (1940); cf. James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man (1916)
Too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the
position of the artists of Wales. There is only one position for an
artist anywhere: and that is, upright.
Quite Early One Morning (1954) pt. 2 "Wales and the Artist"
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.
25 Poems (1936) "The Hand that Signed the Paper Felled a City"
The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.
25 Poems (1936) "The Hand That Signed the Paper Felled a City"
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
25 Poems (1936) "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." Cf. Romans 6:9
To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town,
starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow,
black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 1
Mr pritchard: I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them.
Mrs ogmore-pritchard: And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its
shoes.
Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 16
Alone until she dies, Bessie Bighead, hired help, born in the workhouse,
smelling of the cowshed, snores bass and gruff on a couch of straw in
a loft in Salt Lake Farm and picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to
put on the grave of Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she
wasn't looking and never kissed her again although she was looking all the
time.
Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 19
Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden
to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And
babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far
away. You're looking up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor
little milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you should
be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't life a terrible thing,
thank God?
Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 30
Mae rose cottage: I'm fast. I'm a bad lot. God will strike me dead.
I'm seventeen. I'll go to hell.
Second voice: She tells the goats.
Mae rose cottage: You just wait. I'll sin till I blow up!
Second voice: She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats
champ and sneer.
Under Milk Wood (1954) p. 78
20.14 Edward Thomas
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1878-1917
Out in the dark over the snow
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.
Last Poems (1918) "Out in the Dark"
If I should ever by chance grow rich
I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,
Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,
And let them all to my elder daughter.
Poems (1917) "If I Should Ever By Chance"
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Poems (1917) "Early One Morning"
Yes; I remember Adlestrop--
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
Poems (1917) "Adlestrop"
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
Poems (1917) "Tall Nettles"
I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight
Or winding, soon or late;
They can not choose.
Poems (1917) "Lights Out"
20.15 Gwyn Thomas
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1913-
There are still parts of Wales where the only concession to gaiety is a
striped shroud.
Punch 18 June 1958
20.16 Francis Thompson
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1859-1907
Wake! for the Ruddy Ball has taken flight
That scatters the slow Wicket of the Night;
And the swift Batsman of the Dawn has driven
Against the Star-spiked Rails a fiery smite.
"Wake! for the Ruddy Ball has Taken Flight" (parody of Edward Fitzgerald)
in J. C. Squire Apes and Parrots (1929) p. 173
The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose!
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Daisy"
She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.
She left me marvelling why my soul
Was sad that she was glad;
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Daisy"
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in other's pain,
And perish in our own.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Daisy"
Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "The Poppy"
The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,
Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:
The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.
I hang 'mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "The Poppy"
Look for me in the nurseries of heaven.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "To My Godchild Francis M.W.M."
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 1
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbЉd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 1
For, though I knew His love Who followЉd, Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 2
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 2
I said to Dawn: Be sudden--to Eve :
Be soon.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 2
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 2
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbЉd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 2
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 3
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 4
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 4
Ah! must--
Designer infinite!--
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limm with it?
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 4
Such is: what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 4
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsЉd turrets slowly wash again.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 4
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea :
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!"
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 5
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 5
Halts by me that footfall :
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Hound of Heaven" pt. 5
And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents
Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Arab Love-Song"
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps I know.
For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host
As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro:--
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "At Lord's"
There is no expeditious road
To pack and label men for God,
And save them by the barrel-load.
Some may perchance, with strange surprise,
Have blundered into Paradise.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Epilogue to 'A Judgement in Heaven'"
Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play;
Go, children of swift joy and tardy sorrow:
And some are sung, and that was yesterday,
And some unsung, and that may be to-morrow.
Poems (1913) vol. 1 "Envoy"
Ah, for a heart less native to high Heaven,
A hooded eye, for jesses and restraint,
Or for a will accipitrine to pursue!
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "Dread of Height"
Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet,
And all things are made young with young desires.
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "From the Night of Forebeing"
Let even the slug-abed snail upon the thorn
Put forth a conscious horn!
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "From the Night of Forebeing"
And, while she feels the heavens lie bare,
She only talks about her hair.
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "The Way of a Maid"
Pontifical Death, that doth the crevasse bridge
To the steep and trifid God.
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "An Anthem of Earth"
And all man's Babylons strive but to impart
The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart.
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "The Heart" no. 2
What heart could have thought you?--
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "To a Snowflake"
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "To a Snowflake"
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "The Kingdom of God"
The angels keep their ancient places;--
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangЉd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!
Poems (1913) vol. 2 "The Kingdom of God"
20.17 Hunter S. Thompson
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1939-
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
Title of two articles in Rolling Stone 11 and 25 Nov. 1971 (under the
pseudonym "Raoul Duke")
20.18 Lord Thomson (Roy Herbert Thomson, Baron Thomson of Fleet)
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1894-1976
It is just like having your own licence to print money.
On the profitability of commercial television in Britain, in R. Braddon
Roy Thomson (1965) ch. 32
20.19 Jeremy Thorpe
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1929-
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his
life.
Comment on Harold Macmillan sacking many of his Cabinet, 13 July 1962, in
D. E. Butler and Anthony King General Election of 1964 (1965) ch. 1
20.20 James Thurber
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1894-1961
I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the
night the bed fell on my father.
My Life and Hard Times (1933) ch. 1
Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible
suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.
My Life and Hard Times (1933) ch. 2
All right, have it your own way--you heard a seal bark!
Cartoon caption in New Yorker 30 Jan. 1932
That's my first wife up there and this is the present Mrs Harris.
Cartoon caption in New Yorker 16 Mar. 1933
The war between men and women.
Title of series of cartoons in New Yorker 20 Jan.-28 Apr. 1934
It's a na‹ve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be
amused by its presumption.
Cartoon caption in New Yorker 27 Mar. 1937
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
Cartoon caption in New Yorker 5 June 1937
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
New Yorker 4 Feb. 1939 "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
New Yorker 18 Feb. 1939 "The Shrike and the Chipmunks"
It's our own story exactly! He bold as a hawk, she soft as the dawn.
Cartoon caption in New Yorker 25 Feb. 1939
Then, with that faint fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the
firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty,
the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
New Yorker 18 Mar. 1939 "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
New Yorker 29 Apr. 1939 "The Bear Who Let It Alone"
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
New Yorker 29 Apr. 1939 "The Owl who was God"
"Humour," he said, "is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity."
In New York Post 29 Feb. 1960. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979)
583:10
20.21 Paul Tillich
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1886-1965
Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.
The Courage To Be (1952) pt. 2, ch. 3
He who knows about depth knows about God.
The Shaking of the Foundations (1948) ch. 7
20.22 Dion Titheradge
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And her mother came too!
Title of song (1921; music by Ivor Novello)
20.24 J. R. R. Tolkien
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1892-1973
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet
hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry,
bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was
a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
The Hobbit (1937) ch. 1
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Lord of the Rings, pt. 1 The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) epigraph
20.25 Nicholas Tomalin
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The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning,
a plausible manner and a little literary ability.... The capacity to steal
other people's ideas and phrases--that one about ratlike cunning was
invented by my colleague Murray Sayle--is also invaluable.
Sunday Times Magazine 26 Oct. 1969
20.26 Barry Took and Marty Feldman
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Hello, I'm Julian and this is my friend, Sandy.
Catch-phrase in Round the Horne (BBC radio series, 1965-8)
20.27 Sue Townsend
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The secret diary of Adrian Mole aged 13-3/4.
Title of book (1982)
20.28 Pete Townshend
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1945-
Hope I die before I get old.
My Generation (1965 song)
Feminism is the most revolutionary idea there has ever been. Equality for
women demands a change in the human psyche more profound then anything
Marx dreamed of. It means valuing parenthood as much as we value banking.
Guardian 19 Jan. 1987
20.30 Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
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1852-1917
To a man who was staggering in the street under the weight of a
grandfather clock. "My poor fellow, why not carry a watch?"
Hesketh Pearson Beerbohm Tree (1956) ch. 12
His own note books inform us that a gramophone company asked him for
a testimonial, and he replied that he never gave testimonials to objects
of merchandise. The company begged him to favour their special case, since
his own voice had been reproduced by this means. So he wrote the
following: "Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life
and makes death a long-felt want." He was asked to amend this, as the
public might misconstrue it; but he answered that it was not open to
misconstruction. "The immortalism must stand," said he; but it was not
used as an advertisement by the company.
Hesketh Pearson Beerbohm Tree (1956) ch. 19
He [Israel Zangwill] is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him.
In Max Beerbohm Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1920) appendix 4
He [Beerbohm Tree] approved cheerfully enough of everything until he came
to the collection of damsels that had been dragged into the theatre as
ladies in waiting to the queen. He looked at them in pained and prolonged
dissatisfaction and then said what we have all wanted to say of the
extra-women in nearly every throne-room and ball-room and school-room
scene since the theatre began. "Ladies," said Tree, peering at them
plaintively through his monacle, "just a little more virginity, if you
don't mind."
Alexander Woollcott Shouts and Murmurs (1923) "Capsule Criticism"
20.31 Herbert Trench
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1865-1923
Come, let us make love deathless, thou and I.
Deirdre Lived and Other Poems (1901) "Come, let us make love deathless"
20.32 G. M. Trevelyan
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1876-1962
Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life-blood of real
civilization.
English Social History (1942) introduction
It [education] has produced a vast population able to read but unable to
distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap
appeals.
English Social History (1942) ch. 18
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
In Esquire Sept. 1962. Cf. Igor Stravinsky 210:16
20.34 Tommy Trinder
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1909-1989
Overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here.
Describing American troops in Britain during World War II, in Sunday Times
4 Jan. 1976
20.35 Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein)
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1879-1940
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
Diary in Exile (1959) 8 May 1935
Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in
the long run only changed the form of the pack.
History of the Russian Revolution (1933) vol. 3, ch. 1
You [the Mensheviks] are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts;
your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on--into the dustbin
of history!
History of the Russian Revolution (1933) vol. 3, ch. 10
Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and
completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when
to blend force with a man”uvre, a blow with an agreement.
What Next? (1932) ch. 14
20.36 Harry S. Truman
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1884-1972
I never give them [the public] hell. I just tell the truth, and they
think it is hell.
In Look 3 Apr. 1956
I used to have a saying that applies here, and I note that some people
have picked it up: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Mr Citizen (1960) ch. 15 (see also Harry Vaughan 22.6)
A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes
a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been
dead 10 or 15 years.
In New York World Telegram and Sun 12 Apr. 1958
It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when
you lose yours.
In Observer 13 Apr. 1958
All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his
time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they
are supposed to do anyway.
Letter to his sister, 14 Nov. 1947, in Off the Record: the Private Papers
of Harry S. Truman (1980) p. 119
I didn't fire him [General MacArthur] because he was a dumb son of a
bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If
it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
In Merle Miller Plain Speaking (1974) ch. 24
When the decision is up before you--and on my desk I have a motto which
says "The buck stops here"--the decision has to be made.
Speech at National War College, 19 Dec. 1952, in Public Papers 1952-53
(1966) p. 1094
Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959, in Truman Speaks (1960)
p. 51
20.37 Barbara W. Tuchman
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1912-1989
Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead
grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.
August 1914 (1962) ch. 2
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that
which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
August 1914 (1962) ch. 9
For one August in its history Paris was French--and silent.
August 1914 (1962) ch. 20
20.38 Sophie Tucker
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1884-1966
From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35, she needs good
looks. From 35 to 55, good personality. From 55 on, she needs good cash.
I'm saving my money.
In Michael Freedland Sophie (1978) p. 214
20.39 Walter James Redfern Turner
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1889-1946
When I was but thirteen or so
I went into a golden land,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Took me by the hand.
The Hunter and Other Poems (1916) "Romance"
20.40 Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
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1835-1910
"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" ...was made by Mr Mark Twain, and he told
the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he
told the truth.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) ch. 1
There was some books....One was "Pilgrim's Progress," about a man that
left his family it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then.
The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was "Friendship's
Offering," full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't read the
poetry.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) ch. 17
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) ch. 23
Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain't that a big
enough majority in any town?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) ch. 26
If there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one
would fly first.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog (1867) p. 10
I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog (1867) p. 16
An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and quite often picturesque liar.
Century Magazine Dec. 1885 "Private History of a Campaign that Failed"
Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
A Curious Dream (1872) "Mental Photographs"
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
deadly in the long run.
A Curious Dream (1872) "Facts concerning the Recent Resignation"
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man
looked honest enough.
A Curious Dream (1872) "A Mysterious Visit"
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 7
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and
the prudence never to practise either of them.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 20
"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 25. Cf. Twain's speech to the 19th
Century Club in New York, 20 Nov. 1900, in Speeches (1910) p. 194: "It's
a classic, just as Professor [Caleb] Winchester says, and it meets his
definition of a classic--something that everybody wants to have read and
nobody wants to read."
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 27
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not
succeed.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 28
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is
cowardice.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 36
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 39
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the
heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
Following the Equator (1897) ch. 45
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week,
sometimes, to make it up.
The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 7
They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell
better than they pronounce.
The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 19
I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast--for luncheon--for dinner--for
tea--for supper--for between meals.
The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 27
Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made
Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!
The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 27
That joke was lost on the foreigner--guides cannot master the subtleties
of the American joke.
The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 27
If you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!
The Innocents Abroad (1869) ch. 27
The report of my death was an exaggeration.
New York Journal 2 June 1897 (correcting newspaper reports which
erroneously said that he was ill or dead, confusing him with his cousin,
James Ross Clemens, who had been seriously ill in London)
He [Thomas Carlyle] said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing
Americans out of his backyard with brickbats. They used to go there and
worship. At bottom he was probably fond of them, but he was always able to
conceal it.
New York World 10 Dec. 1899, "Mark Twain's Christmas Book"
What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had
said it before.
Notebooks (1935) p. 67
Familiarity breeds contempt--and children.
Notebooks (1935) p. 237
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and
how little we think of the other person.
Notebooks (1935) p. 345
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for
the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 2
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 3
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is
nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 5
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat
has only nine lives.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 7
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 10
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 11
Put all your eggs in the one basket, and--watch that basket.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 15
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 19
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse-races.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 19
There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels
the stranger's admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing
something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up
new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it
gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the
spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of
weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.
Speech to New England Society in New York, 22 Dec. 1876, in Speeches
(1910) p. 59
There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and grovelling around you
when you've got an apple, and beg the core off of you; but when they've
got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core
one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't-a-going to be
no core.
Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) ch. 1
There ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) ch. 10
The cross of the Legion of Honour has been conferred upon me. However, few
escape that distinction.
A Tramp Abroad (1880) ch. 8
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is
sure.
Letter to Mrs Foote, 2 Dec. 1887, in B. DeCasseres When Huck Finn Went
Highbrow (1934) p. 7
Forty years ago he [Noel Coward] was Slightly in Peter Pan, and you might
say that he has been wholly in Peter Pan ever since.
Curtains (1961) pt. 1, p. 59
What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.
Curtains (1961) pt. 2, p. 347
A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
In New York Times Magazine 9 Jan. 1966, p. 27
A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre
of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
Tynan Right and Left (1967) foreword
21.0 U
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21.1 Miguel de Unamuno
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1864-1937
La vida es duda,
y la fe sin la duda es sўlo muerte.
Life is doubt,
And faith without doubt is nothing but death.
Po‚sias (1907) "Salmo II"
CЈrate de la affeccion de preocuparte cўmo aparezЎas los dem s. CuЎdate
sўlo de cўmo aparezЎas Dios, cuЎdate de la idea que de ti Dios tenga.
Cure yourself of the condition of bothering about how you look to other
people. Concern yourself only with how you appear to God, with the idea
that God has of you.
Vida de Don Quixote y Sancho (Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, 1905) pt. 1
21.2 John Updike
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1932-
One out of three hundred and twelve Americans is a bore, for instance, and
a healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own
weight in other people's patience.
Assorted Prose (1965) "Confessions of a Wild Bore"
The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with
what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.
Rabbit, Run (1960) p. 160
21.3 Sir Peter Ustinov
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1921-
I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always
seemed to me the most civilized music in the world.
Dear Me (1977) ch. 3
Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily
the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
Dear Me (1977) ch. 5
Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.
In Observer 13 Mar. 1955
If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue.
In Observer 21 Oct. 1962
As for being a General, well at the age of four with paper hats and wooden
swords we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.
Romanoff and Juliet (1956) act 1
A diplomat these days is nothing but a head-waiter who's allowed to sit
down occasionally.
Romanoff and Juliet (1956) act 1
22.0 V
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22.1 Paul Val‚ry
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1871-1945
Un poЉme n'est jamais achev‚--c'est toujours un accident qui le termine,
c'est-…-dire qui le donne au public.
A poem is never finished; it's always an accident that puts a stop to
it--i.e. gives it to the public.
Litt‚rature (1930) p. 46
Il faut n'appeler Science: que l'ensemble des recettes qui r‚ussissent
toujours.--Tout le reste est litt‚rature.
"Science" means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always
successful. All the rest is literature.
Moralit‚s (1932) p. 41
Dieu cr‚a l'homme, et ne le trouvant pas assez seul, il lui donne une
compagne pour lui faire mieux sentir sa solitude.
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him
a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Tel Quel 1 (1941) "Moralit‚s"
La politique est l'art d'emp€cher les gens de se m€ler de ce qui les
regarde.
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which
properly concern them.
Tel Quel 2 (1943) "Rhumbs"
22.2 Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss
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Itsy bitsy teenie weenie, yellow polkadot bikini.
Title of song (1960)
22.3 Vivien van Damm
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?1889-1960
I did not coin the slogan "We Never Closed" [for the Windmill Theatre in
London]. It was merely a statement of fact.
Tonight and Every Night (1952) ch. 18
22.4 Laurens van der Post
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1906-
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are
convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Lost World of the Kalahari (1958) ch. 3
If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life talking
at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a
failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph.
Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for
joostice, for man's onderstanding of man as now we do by accident.
Our words--our lives--our pains--nothing! The taking of our lives--lives
of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler--all! That last moment belongs
to us--that agony is our triumph.
Statement after being sentenced, 9 Apr. 1927, in M. D. Frankfurter and G.
Jackson Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (1928) preface
Sacco's name will live in the hearts of the people and in their gratitude
when Katzmann's and yours bones will be dispersed by time, when your name,
his name, your laws, institutions, and your false god are but a deem
rememoring of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man.
Note by Vanzetti of what he wanted to say at his trial, 9 Apr. 1927, in
M. D. Frankfurter and G. Jackson Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (1928)
p. 380
22.6 Harry Vaughan
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If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
In Time 28 Apr. 1952 (often used by Harry S. Truman, q.v.)
22.7 Ralph Vaughan Williams
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1872-1958
I don't know whether I like it [the 4th symphony], but it's what I meant.
In Christopher Headington Bodley Head History of Western Music (1974)
p. 293
On arrival on a visit to the United States, Ralph Vaughan Williams was met
by a crowd of reporters. One of them seized him by the arm and said, "Tell
me, Dr Vaughan Williams, what do you think about music?" The old man
peered quizzically into his face and made the solemn pronouncement: "It's
a Rum Go!"
Leslie Ayr The Wit of Music (1966) p. 43
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to
the gentleman of leisure.
Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) ch. 4
So it is something of a homiletical commonplace to say that the outcome of
any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one
question grew before.
University of California Chronicle (1908) vol. 10, no. 4, "Evolution of
the Scientific Point of View"
22.9 Gore Vidal
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1925-
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
In G. Irvine Antipanegyric for Tom Driberg 8 Dec. 1976, p. 2
It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how
suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
Encounter Dec. 1967, "French Letters: Theories of the New Novel"
A triumph of the embalmer's art.
In Observer 26 Apr. 1981 (describing Ronald Reagan)
I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
In Sunday Times Magazine 16 Sept. 1973
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
In Sunday Times Magazine 16 Sept. 1973
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Two Sisters (1970) p. 65
22.10 King Vidor
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1895-1982
Take it from me, marriage isn't a word...it's a sentence!
The Crowd (1928 film)
22.11 Jos‚ Antonio Viera Gallo
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1943-
El socialismo puede llegar solo en bicicleta.
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
Said when Assistant Secretary of Justice in Chilean Government, in Ivan
Illich Energy and Equity (1974) p. 11
23.0 W
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23.1 John Wain
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1925-
Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.
BBC radio broadcast, 13 Jan. 1976
23.2 Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay
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Jerry Wald 1911-1962
Richard Macaulay
Naughty but nice.
Title of film (1939)
23.3 Prince of Wales
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See Prince Charles (3.48)
23.4 Arthur Waley
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1889-1966
What is hard today is to censor one's own thoughts--
To sit by and see the blind man
On the sightless horse, riding into the bottomless abyss.
Censorship
23.5 Edgar Wallace
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1875-1932
What is a highbrow? He is a man who has found something more interesting
than women.
New York Times 24 Jan. 1932, sec. 8, p. 6
Dreamin' of thee! Dreamin' of thee!
Writ in Barracks (1900) "T. A. in Love" (popularised in 1930 broadcast by
Cyril Fletcher)
23.6 George Wallace
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1919-
Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever!
Inaugural speech as Governor of Alabama, Jan. 1963, in Birmingham World
19 Jan. 1963
23.7 Henry Wallace
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1888-1965
The century on which we are entering--the century which will come out of
this war--can be and must be the century of the common man.
Speech, 8 May 1942, in Vital Speeches (1942) vol. 8, p. 483
23.8 Graham Wallas
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1858-1932
The little girl had the making of a poet in her who, being told to be sure
of her meaning before she spoke, said, "How can I know what I think till
I see what I say?"
Art of Thought (1926) ch. 4. Cf. E. M. Forster 83:9
23.9 Sir Hugh Walpole
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1884-1941
'Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it.
Fortitude (1913) bk.1, ch. 1
23.10 Andy Warhol
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1927-1987
It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: "In
the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." I'm bored with
that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, "In fifteen minutes
everybody will be famous."
Andy Warhol's Exposures (1979) "Studio 54"
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art.
In Observer 1 Mar. 1987
An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have
but that he--for some reason--thinks it would be a good idea to give them.
Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (1975) ch. 10
23.11 Jack Warner (Horace Waters)
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1895-1981
Mind my bike!
Catch-phrase used in the BBC radio series Garrison Theatre, 1939 onwards,
in D. Parker Radio: the Great Years (1977) p. 94
23.12 Ned Washington
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Hi diddle dee dee (an actor's life for me).
Title of song (1940; music by Leigh Harline)
When you wish upon a star.
Title of song (1940; music by Leigh Harline)
23.13 Sir William Watson
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1858-1935
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
Poems (1905) vol. 1, "Song"
These and a thousand tricks and ways and traits
I noted as of Demos at their root,
And foreign to the staid, conservative
Came-over-with-the Conqueror type of mind.
Poems (1905) vol. 1, "A Study in Contrasts"
A shriller note could now be heard rising from Sir Alastair's rooms; any
who have heard that sound will shrink at the recollection of it; it is the
sound of English county families baying for broken glass.
Decline and Fall (1928) "Prelude." Cf. Hilaire Belloc 25:9
I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the
gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.
Decline and Fall (1928) "Prelude"
"We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate
School, Good School, and School. Frankly," said Mr Levy, "School is
pretty bad."
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 1, ch. 1
For generations the British bourgeoisie have spoken of themselves as
gentlemen, and by that they have meant, among other things,
a self-respecting scorn of irregular perquisites. It is the quality that
distinguishes the gentleman from both the artist and the aristocrat.
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 1, ch. 6
"I often think," he continued, "that we can trace almost all the disasters
of English history to the influence of Wales!"
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 1, ch. 8
I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One
needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 2, ch. 3
Apparently he has been reading a series of articles by a popular bishop
and has discovered that there is a species of person called a "Modern
Churchman" who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not
commit himself to any religious belief.
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 2, ch. 4
I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to
the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 3, ch. 1
Any one who has been to an English public school will always feel
comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay
intimacy of the slums, Paul learned, who find prison so soul-destroying.
Decline and Fall (1928) pt. 3, ch. 4
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
Michael Davie (ed.) Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976) "Irregular Notes
1960-65," 26 Mar. 1962
Randolph Churchill went into hospital...to have a lung removed. It was
announced that the trouble was not "malignant." Seeing Ed Stanley in
White's, on my way to Rome, I remarked that it was a typical triumph of
modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant
and remove it.
Michael Davie (ed.) Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (1976) "Irregular Notes
1960-65," Mar. 1964
You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs--except in England, of
course.
The Loved One (1948) ch. 1
In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would
think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used
to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.
The Loved One (1948) ch. 9
Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with
anything.
In Observer 15 Apr. 1962
"The Beast stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments
everywhere," he [Lord Copper] said. "Self-sufficiency at home,
self-assertion abroad."
Scoop (1938) bk. 1, ch. 1
Mr Salter's side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent.
When Lord Copper was right, he said, "Definitely, Lord Copper"; when he
was wrong, "Up to a point."
Scoop (1938) bk. 1, ch. 1
"He [Boot]'s supposed to have a particularly high-class style:
'Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.'..would
that be it?" "Yes," said the Managing Editor. "That must be good style."
Scoop (1938) bk. 1, ch. 1
News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.
And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.
Scoop (1938) bk. 1, ch. 5
"I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house," she [Mrs Earl
Russell Jackson] said.
Scoop (1938) bk. 2, ch. 1
Other nations use "force"; we Britons alone use "Might."
Scoop (1938) bk. 2, ch. 5
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go
to my dentist any day.
Vile Bodies (1930) ch. 6
Lady Peabury was in the morning room reading a novel; early training gave
a guilty spice to this recreation, for she had been brought up to believe
that to read a novel before luncheon was one of the gravest sins it was
possible for a gentlewoman to commit.
Work Suspended (1942) "An Englishman's Home"
The trouble with the Conservative Party is that it has not turned the
clock back a single second.
Attributed
23.15 Frederick Weatherly
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1848-1929
Where are the boys of the old Brigade,
Who fought with us side by side?
The Old Brigade
Roses are flowering in Picardy,
But there's never a rose like you.
Roses of Picardy (1916 song)
If I ever felt inclined to be timid as I was going into a room full of
people, I would say to myself, "You're the cleverest member of one of the
cleverest families in the cleverest class of the cleverest nation in the
world, why should you be frightened?"
In Bertrand Russell Autobiography (1967) vol. 1, ch. 4
See also Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb (23.20)
23.17 Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason
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An everyday story of country folk.
Introduction to The Archers (BBC radio serial, 1950 onwards)
23.18 Jim Webb
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First let me insist on what our opponents habitually ignore, and indeed,
what they seem intellectually incapable of understanding, namely the
inevitable gradualness of our scheme of change.
Presidential address at Labour Party Conference in London, 26 June 1923,
in Report (1923) p. 178
23.20 Sidney Webb (Baron Passfield) and Beatrice Webb
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Sidney would remark, "I know just what Beatrice is saying at this moment.
She is saying, 'as Sidney always says, marriage is the waste-paper basket
of the emotions.'"
Bertrand Russell Autobiography (1967) vol. 1, ch. 4
23.21 Simone Weil
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1909-1943
What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which
enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war.
Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international
conflict.
In W. H. Auden A Certain World (1971) p. 384
La culture est un instrument mani‚ par des professeurs pour fabriquer des
professeurs qui … leur tour fabriqueront des professeurs.
Culture is an instrument wielded by professors, to manufacture professors,
who when their turn comes will manufacture professors.
L'Enracinement (The Need for Roots, 1949) "D‚racinement ouvrier"
Tous les P‚ch‚s sont des tentatives pour combler des vides.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
La Pesanteur et la grѓce(Gravity and Grace, 1948) p. 27
23.22 Johnny Weissmuller
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1904-1984
I didn't have to act in "Tarzan, the Ape Man"--just said, "Me Tarzan, you
Jane."
Photoplay Magazine June 1932 (the words "Me Tarzan, you Jane" do not
occur in the 1932 film)
23.23 Thomas Earle Welby
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1933
"Turbot, Sir," said the waiter, placing before me two fishbones, two
eyeballs, and a bit of black mackintosh.
The Dinner Knell (1932) "Birmingham or Crewe?"
To his associate, Richard Wilson...Orson [Welles] then declared, "This
[the RKO studio] is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had!"
Peter Noble The Fabulous Orson Welles (1956) ch. 7
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror,
murder, bloodshed--they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the
Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of
democracy and peace and what did that produce...? The cuckoo clock.
The Third Man (1949 film; words added by Welles to the script, in Graham
Greene and Carol Reed The Third Man (1969) p. 114
23.27 H. G. Wells
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1866-1946
If Max [Beaverbrook] gets to Heaven he won't last long. He will be chucked
out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell. after having
secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies in both places,
of course.
In A. J. P. Taylor Beaverbrook (1972) ch. 8
The thing his [Henry James's] novel is about is always there. It is like
a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light
and line focussed on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently
placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string.
Boon (1915) ch. 4
It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful
hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon
picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den. Most things, it
insists, are beyond it, but it can, at any rate modestly, and with an
artistic singleness of mind, pick up that pea.
Boon (1915) ch. 4 (on Henry James)
He [James Holroyd] was a practical electrician but fond of whisky,
a heavy, red-haired brute with irregular teeth. He doubted the existence
of the Deity but accepted Carnot's cycle, and he had read Shakespeare and
found him weak in chemistry.
Complete Short Stories (1927) "Lord of the Dynamos"
But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon
life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind
had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb,
as if it were a refrain--In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is
King.
The Country of the Blind (1904; revised 1939) p. 52
"Sesquippledan," he would say. "Sesquippledan verboojuice."
History of Mr Polly (1909) ch. 1, pt. 5
"I'm a Norfan, both sides," he would explain, with the air of one who had
seen trouble.
Kipps (1905) bk. 1, ch. 6, pt. 1
"I expect," he said, "I was thinking jest what a Rum Go everything is.
I expect it was something like that."
Kipps (1905) bk. 3, ch. 3, pt. 8
The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of
human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the
general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into
the social masonry.
Love and Mr Lewisham (1900) ch. 23
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and
catastrophe.
Outline of History (1920) vol. 2, ch. 41, pt. 4
The shape of things to come.
Title of book (1933)
The war that will end war.
Title of book (1914). Cf. David Lloyd-George 138:8
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914) ch. 9, sect. 2
In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years
or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be
done and a serious attempt to do it.
The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931) ch. 2
23.28 Arnold Wesker
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1932-
And then I saw the menu, stained with tea and beautifully written by
a foreign hand, and on top it said--God I hated that old man--it said
"Chips with everything." Chips with every damn thing. You breed babies and
you eat chips with everything.
Chips with Everything (1962) act 1, sc. 2
23.29 Mae West
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1980
It's better to be looked over than overlooked.
Belle of the Nineties (1934 film)
A man in the house is worth two in the street.
Belle of the Nineties (1934 film)
You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
Every Day's a Holiday (1937 film). A similar line is spoken by Robert
Benchley in the 1942 film The Major and the Minor, written by Charles
Brackett and Billy Wilder. Cf. 7:12
I always say, keep a diary and some day it'll keep you.
Every Day's a Holiday (1937 film)
Beulah, peel me a grape.
I'm No Angel (1933 film)
I've been things and seen places.
I'm No Angel (1933 film)
When I'm good, I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.
I'm No Angel (1933 film)
It's not the men in my life that counts--it's the life in my men.
I'm No Angel (1933 film)
Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.
Klondike Annie (1936 film)
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Klondike Annie (1936 film)
I've been in Who's Who, and I know what's what, but it'll be the first
time I ever made the dictionary.
Letter to the RAF, early 1940s, on having an inflatable life jacket named
after her, in Fergus Cashin Mae West (1981) ch. 9
"Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!"
"Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."
Night After Night (1932 film)
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
In Joseph Weintraub Peel Me a Grape (1975) p. 47
I used to be Snow White...but I drifted.
In Joseph Weintraub Peel Me a Grape (1975) p. 47
Why don't you come up sometime, and see me? I'm home every evening.
She Done Him Wrong (1933 film; often misquoted as "Come up and see me
sometime," which became Mae West's catch-phrase)
23.30 Dame Rebecca West (Cicily Isabel Fairfield)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-1983
Journalism--an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.
New York Herald Tribune 22 Apr. 1956, sec. 6, p. 2
He [Michael Arlen] is every other inch a gentleman.
In Victoria Glendinning Rebecca West (1987) pt. 3, ch. 5
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as
indefensible as infanticide.
The Strange Necessity (1928) "The Tosh Horse"
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who
sits down and considers just how many people know the truth about his or
her love affairs.
Vogue 1 Nov. 1952
She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an unalterable
and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of
French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian
for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
Age of Innocence (1920) bk. 1, ch. 1
She keeps on being Queenly in her own room with the door shut.
The House of Mirth (1905) bk. 2, ch. 1
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of
immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
The Writing of Fiction (1925) ch. 1
Mrs Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though
it were dangerous to meet it alone.
Xingu and Other Stories (1916) "Xingu"
23.32 E. B. White
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1985
Mother: It's broccoli, dear.
Child: I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.
New Yorker 8 Dec. 1928 (cartoon caption)
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are
right more than half of the time.
New Yorker 3 July 1944
Commuter--one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train,
And then rides back to shave again.
Poems and Sketches (1982) "The Commuter"
23.33 T. H. White
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-1964
The Victorians had not been anxious to go away for the weekend. The
Edwardians, on the contrary, were nomadic.
Farewell Victoria (1933) pt. 4
The once and future king.
Title of novel (1958)
23.34 Alfred North Whitehead
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1861-1947
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the
Universe.
Adventures of Ideas (1933) pt. 1, ch. 5
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be
true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation
of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and is its
importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting
than a false one.
Adventures of Ideas (1933) pt. 4, ch. 16
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to
treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Dialogues (1954) prologue
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is
capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Dialogues (1954) 15 Dec. 1939
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then
and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.
Dialogues (1954) 30 Aug. 1941
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic
enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Dialogues (1954) 10 June 1943
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them.
Introduction to Mathematics (1911) ch. 5
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Process and Reality (1929) pt. 2, ch. 1
No nice men are good at getting taxis.
Observer 1977
Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats,
and shrapnel.
Shouts and Murmurs (1963) "Hats"
I wouldn't say when you've seen one Western you've seen the lot; but when
you've seen the lot you get the feeling you've seen one.
Sunday Best (1976) "Decoding the West"
23.37 George Whiting
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My blue heaven.
Title of song (1927; music by Walter Donaldson)
When you're all dressed up and have no place to go.
Title of song (1912; music by Newton Harding)
Well may he say "God Save the Queen." But after this nothing will save the
Governor-General.... Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm through the
campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day.
Speech in Canberra, 11 Nov. 1975, in The Times 12 Nov. 1975
23.39 Charlotte Whitton
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1896-1975
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as
good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
In Canada Month June 1963
23.40 William H. Whyte
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1917-
This book is about the organization man.... I can think of no other way to
describe the people I am talking about. They are not the workers, nor are
they the white-collar people in the usual, clerk sense of the word. These
people only work for the Organization. The ones I am talking about belong
to it as well.
The Organization Man (1956) ch. 1
23.41 Anna Wickham (Edith Alice Mary Harper)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1884-1947
It is well within the order of things
That man should listen when his mate sings;
But the true male never yet walked
Who liked to listen when his mate talked.
The Contemplative Quarry (1915) "The Affinity"
23.42 Richard Wilbur
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1921-
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, "You are not true."
Ceremony and Other Poems (1950) "Epistemology"
23.43 Billy Wilder (Samuel Wilder)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1906-
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
In J. R. Columbo Wit and Wisdom of the Moviemakers (1979) ch. 7
23.44 Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Billy Wilder 1906-
I. A. L. Diamond
Gerry: We can't get married at all.... I'm a man.
Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.
Some Like It Hot (1959 film; closing words)
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
Merchant of Yonkers (1939) act 1
The fights are the best part of married life. The rest is merely so-so.
Merchant of Yonkers (1939) act 2
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
In Time 12 Jan. 1953
23.46 Kaiser Wilhelm II
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1859-1941
We have...fought for our place in the sun and have won it. It will be my
business to see that we retain this place in the sun unchallenged, so that
the rays of that sun may exert a fructifying influence upon our foreign
trade and traffic.
Speech in Hamburg, 18 June 1901, in The Times 20 June 1901
23.47 Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Geoffrey Willans 1911-1958
Ronald Searle 1920-
The only good things about skool are the boys wizz who are noble brave
fearless etc. although you hav various swots, bulies, cissies, milksops,
greedy guts and oiks with whom i am forced to mingle hem-hem.
Down With Skool! (1953) p. 7
This is wot it is like when we go back on the skool trane. There are lots
of new bugs and all there maters blub they hav every reason if they knew
what they were going to. For us old lags however it is just another
stretch same as any other and no remision for good conduc. We kno what it
will be like at the other end Headmaster beaming skool bus ratle off
leaving trail of tuck boxes peason smugling in a box of flat 50 cigs
fotherington-tomas left in the lugage rack and new bugs stand as if
amazed.
How To Be Topp (1954) ch. 1
There is no better xsample of a goody-goody than fotherington-tomas in the
world in space. You kno he is the one who sa Hullo Clouds Hullo Sky and
skip about like a girly.
How To Be Topp (1954) ch. 4
Still xmas is a good time with all those presents and good food and i hope
it will never die out or at any rate not until i am grown up and hav to
pay for it all.
How To Be Topp (1954) ch. 11
23.48 Harry Williams
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1924
I'm afraid to come home in the dark.
Title of song (1907; music by Egbert van Alstyne)
23.49 Kenneth Williams
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1926-1988
The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance
with the originator which is often socially impressive.
Acid Drops (1980) preface
23.50 Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1911-1983
We have to distrust each other. It's our only defence against betrayal.
Camino Real (1953) block 10
We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just
a work in progress.
Camino Real (1953) block 12
What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?--I wish I knew....Just
staying on it, I guess, as long as she can.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) act 1
Brick: Well, they say nature hates a vacuum, Big Daddy.
Big daddy: That's what they say, but sometimes I think that a vacuum is
a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it
with.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) act 2. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(1979) 403:27
Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an' death's
the other.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) act 2
I didn't go to the moon, I went much further--for time is the longest
distance between two places.
The Glass Menagerie (1945) p. 123
We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins,
for life!
Orpheus Descending (1958) act 2, sc. 1
Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare!
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) sc. 1
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) sc. 11 (Blanche's final words)
23.51 William Carlos Williams
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1883-1963
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists--
unless one should scour the world--
you have the ground sense necessary.
Book of Poems Al Que Quiere! (1917) "Tract"
Minds like beds always made up,
(more stony than a shore)
unwilling or unable.
Paterson (1946) bk. 1, preface
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Spring and All (1923) "The Red Wheelbarrow"
Is it any better in Heaven, my friend Ford,
Than you found it in Provence?
The Wedge (1944) "To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven"
23.52 Ted Willis (Edward Henry Willis, Baron Willis of Chislehurst)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1918-
Evening, all.
Opening words spoken by Jack Warner as Sergeant Dixon in Dixon of Dock
Green (BBC television series, 1956-76)
The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.
An American Programme (1944) ch. 2
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it,
we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or
poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the
colour of their skin.
One World (1943) ch. 13
23.54 Angus Wilson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1913-
"God knows how you Protestants can be expected to have any sense of
direction," she said. "It's different with us, I haven't been to mass for
years, I've got every mortal sin on my conscience, but I know when I'm
doing wrong. I'm still a Catholic, it's there, nothing can take it away
from me." "Of course, duckie," said Jeremy..."once a Catholic always
a Catholic."
The Wrong Set (1949) p. 168. Cf. Mary O'Malley
23.55 Charles E. Wilson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1890-1961
For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General
Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too
big. It goes with the welfare of the country. Our contribution to the
nation is quite considerable.
Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on his proposed
nomination to be Secretary of Defence, 15 Jan. 1953, in New York Times
24 Feb. 1953, p. 8
23.56 Edmund Wilson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1895-1972
Of all the great Victorian writers, he [Dickens] was probably the most
antagonistic to the Victorian age itself.
The Wound and the Bow (1941) "Dickens: the Two Scrooges"
23.57 Harold Wilson (Baron Wilson of Rievaulx)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1916-
Traders and financiers all over the world had been listening to the
Chancellor. For months he had said that if he could not stop the wage
claims, the country was "facing disaster."... Rightly or wrongly these
people believed him. For them, 5th September--the day that the Trades
Union Congress unanimously rejected the policy of wage restraint--marked
the end of an era. And all these financiers, all the little gnomes in
Zurich and the other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing,
started to make their dispositions in regard to sterling.
Hansard 12 Nov. 1956, col. 578
The Smethwick Conservatives can have the satisfaction of having topped the
poll, and of having sent here as their Member one who, until a further
General Election restores him to oblivion, will serve his term here as
a Parliamentary leper.
Hansard 3 Nov. 1964, col. 71
My hon. Friends know that if one buys land on which there is a slag heap
120 ft. high and it costs њ100,000 to remove that slag, that is not land
speculation in the sense that we condemn it. It is land reclamation.
Hansard 4 Apr. 1974, col. 1441
If I had the choice between smoked salmon and tinned salmon, I'd have it
tinned. With vinegar.
In Observer 11 Nov. 1962
The Monarchy is a labour-intensive industry.
In Observer 13 Feb. 1977
Harold Wilson...was unable to remember when he first uttered his dictum to
the effect that: A week is a long time in politics. Inquiries among
political journalists led to the conclusion that in its present form the
phrase was probably first uttered at a meeting between Wilson and the
Parliamentary lobby in the wake of the Sterling crisis shortly after he
first took office as Prime Minister in 1964. However, Robert
Carvel...recalled Wilson at a Labour Party conference in 1960 saying
"Forty-eight hours is a long time in politics."
Nigel Rees Sayings of the Century (1984) p. 149
This party [the Labour Party] is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
Speech at Labour Party Conference 1 Oct. 1962, in The Times 2 Oct. 1962
The Prime Ministers [at the Lagos Conference, 9-12 Jan. 1966] noted the
statement by the British Prime Minister that on the expert advice
available to him the cumulative effects of the economic and financial
sanctions might well bring the rebellion to an end within a matter of
weeks rather than months.
The Times 13 Jan. 1966
From now the pound abroad is worth 14 per cent or so less in terms of
other currencies. It does not mean, of course, that the pound here in
Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.
Ministerial broadcast, 19 Nov. 1967, in The Times 20 Nov. 1967
Everyone wanted more wage increases, he [Mr Wilson] said, believing that
prices would remain stable; but one man's wage increase was another man's
price increase.
Speech at Blackburn, 8 Jan. 1970, in The Times 9 Jan. 1970
23.58 McLandburgh Wilson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1892-
'Twixt the optimist and pessimist
The difference is droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut
But the pessimist sees the hole.
Optimist and Pessimist
23.59 Sandy Wilson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1924-
It's never too late to have a fling,
For Autumn is just as nice as Spring,
And it's never too late to fall in love.
It's Never too Late to Fall in Love (1953 song)
23.60 Woodrow Wilson
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1856-1924
It must be a peace without victory.... Only a peace between equals can
last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common
participation in a common benefit.
Speech to US Senate, 22 Jan. 1917, in Messages and Papers (1924) vol. 1,
p. 352
Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am
an American. America, my fellow citizens--I do not say it in
disaparagement of any other great people--America is the only idealistic
Nation in the world.
Speech at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 8 Sept. 1919, in Messages and Papers
(1924) vol. 2, p. 822
Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such
a thing as tolerance.
In John Dos Passos Mr Wilson's War (1917) pt. 3, ch. 12
We have stood apart, studiously neutral.
Speech to Congress, 7 Dec. 1915, in New York Times 8 Dec. 1915, p. 4
America can not be an ostrich with its head in the sand.
Speech at Des Moines, 1 Feb. 1916, in New York Times 2 Feb. 1916, p. 1
A little group of wilful men representing no opinion but their own, have
rendered the Great Government of the United States helpless and
contemptible.
Statement, 4 Mar. 1917, after a successful filibuster against Wilson's
bill to arm American merchant ships, in New York Times 5 Mar. 1917, p. 1
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from
the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of
resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of
governmental power, not the increase of it.
Speech to New York Press Club in New York, 9 Sept. 1912, in Papers of
Woodrow Wilson (1978) vol. 25, p. 124
No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation.
Speech in New York, 20 Apr. 1915, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 79
There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight; there is such
a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince
others by force that it is right.
Speech in Philadelphia, 10 May 1915, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 88
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best.
Speech to Congress, 2 Apr. 1917, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 190
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon
the tested foundations of political liberty.
Speech to Congress, 2 Apr. 1917, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 195
The right is more precious than peace.
Speech to Congress, 2 Apr. 1917, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 197
The programme of the world's peace...is this:
1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall
be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall
proceed always frankly and in the public view.
Speech to Congress, 8 Jan. 1918, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 247
The day war broke out.
Catch-phrase, from circa 1940
23.62 Arthur Wimperis
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1874-1953
I've gotter motter
Always merry and bright!
Look around and you will find
Every cloud is silver-lined;
The sun will shine
Altho' the sky's a grey one;
I've often said to meself, I've said,
"Cheer up, curly you'll soon be dead!
A short life and a gay one!"
My Motter (1909 song; music by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot)
Therefore Trampas spoke. "You bet, you son-of-a--" The Virginian's pistol
came out, and...he issued his orders to the man Trampas:--"When you call
me that, smile!"
The Virginian (1902) ch. 2
23.64 Ludwig Wittgenstein
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1889-1951
G„be es ein Verbum mit der Bedeutung "f„lschlich glamben," so h„tte das
heine sinnvolle erste Person im Indikatir des Pr„sens.
If there were a verb meaning "to behave falsely," it would not have any
significant first person, present indicative.
Philosophical Investigations (1953) pt. 2, sec. 10
Was sich Ѓberhaupt sagen l„sst, l„sst sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht
reden kann, darЃber muss man schweigen.
What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak
thereof one must be silent.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) preface
Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
The world is everything that is the case.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) p. 30
Die Logik muss fЃr sich selber sorgen.
Logic must take care of itself.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) p. 126
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) p. 148
Die Welt des GlЃcklichen ist eine andere als die des UnglЃcklichen.
The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) p. 184
23.65 P. G. Wodehouse
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1881-1975
Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab
a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate.
All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains. What good
are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.
The Adventures of Sally (1920) ch. 10
It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance
and a ray of sunshine.
Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935) "The Custody of the Pumpkin"
At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front door.
Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram.
Carry On, Jeeves! (1925) "Jeeves Takes Charge"
He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if
not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully
changed the subject.
The Code of the Woosters (1938) ch. 1
Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.
The Code of the Woosters (1938) ch. 1
It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the
core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.
The Code of the Woosters (1938) ch. 2
Roderick Spode? Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that
can open an oyster at sixty paces?
The Code of the Woosters (1938) ch. 2
To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and
encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.
The Heart of a Goof (1926) dedication
The lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down into
the mezzanine floor.
The Heart of a Goof (1926) "Chester Forgets Himself"
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one
who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in
the small of the back.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) ch. 4
Sir Roderick Glossop, Honoria's father, is always called a nerve
specialist, because it sounds better, but everybody knows that he's really
a sort of janitor to the looney-bin.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) ch. 7
As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions
when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval
swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is
being shot round the family circle ("Please read this carefully and send
it on to Jane"), the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the
advantages I get from being a bachelor--and, according to my nearest and
dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) ch. 16
It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in
advance of medical thought.
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) ch. 16
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do
not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
The Man Upstairs (1914) title story
She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by
someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that
season.
My Man Jeeves (1919) "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest"
What with excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and
what-not, the afternoon passed quite happily.
My Man Jeeves (1919) "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest"
"What ho!" I said.
"What ho!" said Motty.
"What ho! What ho!"
"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
My Man Jeeves (1919) "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest"
I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see
what I mean.
My Man Jeeves (1919) "Rallying Round Old George"
Ice formed on the butler's upper slopes.
Pigs Have Wings (1952) ch. 5
The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured
into his clothes and had forgotten to say "When!."
Very Good, Jeeves (1930) "Jeeves and the Impending Doom"
You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.
The Uncelestial City (1930) "Over the Fire"
23.67 Thomas Wolfe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1900-1938
Most of the time we think we're sick, it's all in the mind.
Look Homeward, Angel (1929) pt. 1, ch. 1
"Where they got you stationed now, Luke?" said Harry Tugman peering up
snoutily from a mug of coffee. "At the p-p-p-present time in Norfolk at
the Navy base," Luke answered, "m-m-making the world safe for hypocrisy."
Look Homeward, Angel (1929) pt. 3, ch. 36
You can't go home again.
Title of novel (1940)
23.68 Tom Wolfe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1931-
The bonfire of the vanities.
Title of novel (1987)
23.70 Lt.-Commander Thomas Woodroofe
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1899-1978
At the present moment, the whole Fleet's lit up. When I say "lit up,"
I mean lit up by fairy lamps.
Radio broadcast, 20 May 1937
23.71 Harry Woods
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Oh we ain't got a barrel of money,
Maybe we're ragged and funny,
But we'll travel along
Singin' a song,
Side by side.
Side by Side (1927 song)
When the red, red, robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along.
Title of song (1926)
23.72 Virginia Woolf
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1882-1941
Righteous indignation. is misplaced if we agree with the lady's maid that
high birth is a form of congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely
inherits diseases of his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part
very stoically, in one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which
are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.
The Common Reader (1925) "Lady Dorothy Nevill." Cf. Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (1979) 244:21
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the
eternity of print.
The Common Reader (1925) "The Modern Essay"
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by
heart; and his friends could only read the title.
Jacob's Room (1922) ch. 5
Never did I read such tosh [as James Joyce's Ulysses]. As for the first
two chapters we will let them pass, but the 3rd 4th 5th 6th--merely the
scratching of pimples on the body of the bootboy at Claridges.
Letter to Lytton Strachey, 24 Apr. 1922, in Letters (1976) vol. 2, p. 551
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
A Room of One's Own (1929) ch. 1
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the
magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its
natural size.
A Room of One's Own (1929) ch. 2
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond
reason the opinions of others.
A Room of One's Own (1929) ch. 3
So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl
throwing a ball.
To the Lighthouse (1927) pt. 1, ch. 13
Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost
friends, some by death--Percival--others through sheer inability to cross
the street.
The Waves (1931) p. 202
23.73 Alexander Woollcott
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1887-1943
A broker is a man who takes your fortune and runs it into a shoestring.
In Samuel Hopkins Adams Alexander Woollcott (1945) ch. 15
I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained
by some of your grosser reminiscences.
Letter to Rex O'Malley, 1942, in Samuel Hopkins Adams Alexander Woollcott
(1945) ch. 34
She [Dorothy Parker] is so odd a blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth.
It is not so much the familiar phenomenon of a hand of steel in a velvet
glove as a lacy sleeve with a bottle of vitriol concealed in its folds.
While Rome Burns (1934) "Our Mrs Parker"
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or
fattening.
In R. E. Drennan Wit's End (1973)
23.74 Frank Lloyd Wright
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1867-1959
The necessities were going by default to save the luxuries until I hardly
knew which were necessities and which luxuries.
Autobiography (1945) bk. 2, p. 108
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his
client to plant vines--so they should go as far as possible from home to
build their first buildings.
New York Times 4 Oct. 1953, sec. 6, p. 47
Left hand down a bit!
The Navy Lark (BBC radio series, 1959-77)
23.77 George Wyndham
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1863-1913
Over the construction of Dreadnoughts. What the people said was, "We want
eight, and we won't wait."
Speech in Wigan, 27 Mar. 1909, in The Times 29 Mar. 1909
23.78 Tammy Wynette (Wynette Pugh) and Billy Sherrill
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Tammy Wynette (Wynette Pugh) 1942-
Billy Sherrill
Stand by your man.
Title of song (1968)
24.0 Y
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
24.1 R. J. Yeatman
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1898-1968
See W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman (19.45)
24.2 W. B. Yeats
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
1865-1939
I think it better that at times like these
We poets keep our mouths shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He's had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth
Or an old man upon a winter's night.
"A Reason for Keeping Silent" in Edith Wharton (ed.) The Book of the
Homeless (1916) p. 45
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; Oh, honey-bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
The Cat and the Moon (1924) "Meditations in Time of Civil War 6: The
Stare's Nest by my Window"
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the gray twilight;
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of morn.
The Celtic Twilight (1893) "Into the Twilight"
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmur, a little sad, "From us fled Love.
He paced upon the mountains far above,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "When You Are Old"
A pity beyond all telling,
Is hid in the heart of love.
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Pity of Love"
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
The Countess Kathleen (1892) "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with
ourselves, poetry.
Essays (1924) "Anima Hominis" sec. 5
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "No Second Troy"
The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart.
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "The Fascination of What's
Difficult"
But where's the wild dog that has praised his fleas?
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "To a Poet, Who would have Me
Praise certain bad Poets, Imitators of His and of Mine"
When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs,
That one believed he had a sword upstairs.
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) "All Things can Tempt Me"
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle age?
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1912) "On hearing that the Students of
our New University have joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature"
I said "a line will take us hours maybe,
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught."
In the Seven Woods (1903) "Adam's Curse"
The land of faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) p. 12
Land of Heart's Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song.
The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) p. 36
Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler Phidias wrought.
Michaelangelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
Proof that there's a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.
Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 4
Irish poets, learn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter.
Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 5
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.
Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 5
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliffe churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!
Last Poems (1939) "Under Ben Bulben" pt. 6
Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That with a mallet or a chisel modelled these
Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down
All Asiatic vague immensities,
And not the banks of oars that swam upon
The many-headed foam at Salamis.
Europe put off that foam when Phidias
Gave women dreams and dreams their looking glass.
Last Poems (1939) "The Statues"
When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side
What stalked through the Post Office? What intellect,
What calculation, number, measurement, replied?
We Irish, born into that ancient sect
But thrown upon this filthy modern tide
And by its formless spawning, fury wrecked,
Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace
The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.
Last Poems (1939) "The Statues"
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand under his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
Last Poems (1939) "Long-Legged Fly"
Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Last Poems (1939) "The Circus Animals' Desertion" pt. 3
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "Easter, 1916"
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "Easter, 1916"
I write it out in a verse--
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "Easter, 1916"
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "The Second Coming"
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "The Second Coming"
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) "A Prayer for My Daughter"
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.
New Poems (1938) "The Ghost of Roger Casement"
Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.
New Poems (1938) "The Municipal Gallery Re-visited"
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attendance upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song?
New Poems (1938) "The Spur"
I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
Nine Poems (1918) "A Song"
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations--at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish flesh or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten born and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
October Blast (1927) "Sailing to Byzantium"
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress.
October Blast (1927) "Sailing to Byzantium"
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
October Blast (1927) "Sailing to Byzantium"
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
October Blast (1927) "Among School Children"
The Light of Lights
Looks always on the motive, not the deed,
The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.
Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 3
The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman goads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.
Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 4
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.
Poems (1895) "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time"
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
Poems (1895) "The Rose of Battle"
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Poems (1895) "Down by the Salley Gardens"
In dreams begins responsibility.
Responsibilities (1914) epigraph
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Responsibilities (1914) "September, 1913"
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eye
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
Responsibilities (1914) "A Coat"
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress.
The Secret Rose (1897) "To the Secret Rose"
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
The Secret Rose (1897) "To the Secret Rose"
Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
Selected Poems (1929) "The Scholars"
Does the imagination dwell the most
Upon a woman won or woman lost?
If on the lost, admit you turned aside
From a great labyrinth out of pride.
The Tower (1928) "The Tower" pt. 2
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
The Tower (1928) "Leda and the Swan"
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
The Tower (1928) "Leda and the Swan"
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the
eye of day;
The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
The Tower (1928) "From Oedipus at Colonus"
I mourn for that most lonely thing; and yet God's will be done,
I knew a phoenix in my youth so let them have their day.
The Wild Swans at Coole (1917) "His Phoenix"
I see a schoolboy when I think of him
With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave
His senses and his heart unsatisfied,
And made--being poor, ailing and ignorant,
Shut out from all the luxury of the world,
The ill-bred son of a livery stable-keeper--
Luxuriant song.
The Wild Swans at Coole (1917) "Ego Dominus Tuus" [of Keats]
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor angry crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death"
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) "Song of Wandering Aengus"
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
The Winding Stair (1929) "In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz"
The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time.
The Winding Stair (1929) "In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz"
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all.
The Winding Stair (1929) "Death"
He knows death to the bone--
Man has created death.
The Winding Stair (1929) "Death"
What lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
The Winding Stair (1929) "A Woman Young and Old" pt. 9
We were the last romantics--chose for theme
Traditional sanctity and loveliness;
Whatever's written in what poets name
The book of the people; whatever most can bless
The mind of man or elevate a rhyme;
But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) "Coole and Ballylee, 1931"
A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) "Crazy Jane Talks with the
Bishop"
A starlit or a moonlit dome distains
All that man is;
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Byzantium"
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Byzantium"
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessЉd and could bless.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Vacillation"
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Coole Park and Ballylee,
1932"
Only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Anne Gregory"
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Swift's Epitaph"
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Remorse for Intemperate
Speech"
What were all the world's alarms
To mighty Paris when he found
Sleep upon a golden bed
That first night in Helen's arms?
Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) "Lullaby"
24.3 Jack Yellen
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1892-1958
Happy days are here again!
The skies above are clear again.
Let us sing a song of cheer again,
Happy days are here again!
Happy Days Are Here Again (1929 song; music by Milton Ager)
I'm the last of the red-hot mamas.
Title of song (1928; popularized by Sophie Tucker)
24.4 Michael Young
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1915-
The rise of the meritocracy 1870-2033.
Title of book (1958)
24.5 Waldemar Young et al.
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We have ways of making men talk.
Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935 film; the words became a catch-phrase as
"We have ways of making you talk")
25.0 Z
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25.1 Darryl F. Zanuck
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1902-1979
For God's sake don't say yes until I've finished talking.
In Philip French The Movie Moguls (1969) ch. 5
Muchos de ellos, por complacer a tiranos, por un pu¤ado de monedas, o por
cohecho o soborno, est n derramando la sangre de sus hermanos.
Many of them, so as to curry favour with tyrants, for a fistful of coins,
or through bribery or corruption, are shedding the blood of their
brothers.
Plan de Ayala 28 Nov. 1911, para. 10 (referring to the maderistas who, in
Zapata's view, had betrayed the revolutionary cause)
25.3 Frank Zappa
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1940-
Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't
talk for people who can't read.
In Linda Botts Loose Talk (1980) p. 177
25.4 Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale
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Robert Zemeckis 1952-
Bob Gale 1952-
Back to the future.
Title of film (1985)
25.5 Ronald L. Ziegler
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1939-
Reminded of the President's previous statements that the White House was
not involved [in the Watergate affair], Ziegler said that Mr Nixon's
latest statement "is the Operative White House Position...and all previous
statements are inoperative."
Boston Globe 18 Apr. 1973
25.6 Grigori Zinoviev
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Armed warfare must be preceded by a struggle against the inclinations to
compromise which are embedded among the majority of British workmen,
against the ideas of evolution and peaceful extermination of capitalism.
Only then will it be possible to count upon complete success of an armed
insurrection.
Letter to the British Communist Party, 15 Sept. 1924, in The Times 25 Oct.
1924 (the "Zinoviev Letter," said by some to be a forgery: see Listener
17 Sept. 1987)